JHK’s Three-Act Play, Big Slide
A log mansion in the Adirondack Mountains…
A big family on the run…
A nation in peril…
Visit the Big Slide Page to order, perform, or see sample scenes.

Ho ho ho! It’s that time of year again. Here’s JHK’s holiday classic: A Christmas Orphan.

11-year-old Jeff Greenaway hears his mom and dad argue one night after an office Christmas party. He infers from their garbled squabble that he is an orphan, found in a willow basket on the welcome mat outside their New York apartment. Thinking now that his parents are imposters, he steals away to Grand Central Station and buys a train ticket to Drakesville, Vermont, where he intends to start life all over again.Print | Kindle | Kobo (Digital) | Barnes & Noble (Digital)

Do you know why scenes or even just shots of freeways so seldom appear in the movies we watch? Because they are so depressing that nobody can stand to see them. The jolts of terror that you get in a horror movie at least inform you that you’re alive, but the sight of a freeway only reminds you of what it’s like to be dead.

By extension, the true condition of the USA is too depressing to think about, and that’s largely the reason for our political paralysis. The “fiscal cliff” is only one step on a stairway to a different disposition of things, a world made by hand, in which we will no longer be prisoners of the freeway or hostages of the WalMart corporation, and I’m in favor of hastening the journey to get there rather than waste what remains of our wealth and spirits in futile rear-guard actions to stay where we are. There may be fewer frenzied days of Christmas shopping in that future world, but the company will be better, and the music will include the sound of your own voice.

It’s not that hard to imagine where history is taking us, if you accept the fact that it means a very different shape and texture of daily life. For instance: the jobs problem. We seem disappointed that none of our policy dodges — money-printing, stimulus packages, bailouts, wars — can bring back the working-stiff paradise of 1965 in which assembly line workers made as much money as tenured college professors and a year at the State U cost $500.

I don’t happen to be a political conservative in the standard sense, but the right-wingers have a point when they say there are a lot of idle people out there who can’t be supported forever by transfer payments. A lot of positions will be opening up in agriculture, but not in the way it is practiced today. The Agri-biz model of food production is not going to be operating much longer. We’re on the verge of a world food crisis that will provoke a complete revolution in farming, from the giant scale to the small and local scale, from industry to husbandry, from automation to loving care. The transition might not be a smooth one, since it entails questions of land ownership that, historically, get settled by political upheavals. But eventually we’ll get to that place of social re-set and there will be plenty of work for even the partially able-bodied. Hard to imagine, I know.

The future is quite the opposite of the robotic wet dream currently being sold out of the corporate propaganda mills. It’s much more likely that human labor (and human attention!) will be needed in millions of local economic niches, since rebuilding local economies is at the heart of that future. This will be true in the activities that support local agriculture, but also in rebuilding Main Street commercial networks, the physical reconstruction of towns and neighborhoods to replace failed suburbs and failed giant metroplex cities, in transportation, education, and medicine, and in running households that are organized differently than today’s familiar McHouses.

Right now the political process is resisting any effort to imagine that future, the aforementioned right-wingers most of all, despite their recognition of the transfer payment trap. More disturbing, though, is the likely apprehension by those in authority that the current arrangement of things is dangerously fragile. They are hostages to their own unwillingness to imagine living differently. So, doing nothing to upset the current system of organized complexity seems like the only safe option.

These implacable forces of history cannot be held back forever and will only move toward greater criticality in 2013. My annual forecast on these questions will come out next week in this space. Meantime, find whatever joy you can in the frantic exertions of Christmas, as practiced today, mostly on the freeway, coming and going to and from the WalMart or Target or TJ Max — and if you happen to be on the path to living differently tell us what your Christmas is like in the comments roll.

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For a complete list of books by James Howard Kunstler and purchase links, CLICK HERE.

About James Howard Kunstler

James Howard Kunstler is the author of many books including (non-fiction) The Geography of Nowhere, The City in Mind: Notes on the Urban Condition, Home from Nowhere, The Long Emergency, and Too Much Magic: Wishful Thinking, Technology and the Fate of the Nation. His novels include World Made By Hand, The Witch of Hebron, Maggie Darling — A Modern Romance, The Halloween Ball, an Embarrassment of Riches, and many others. He has published three novellas with Water Street Press: Manhattan Gothic, A Christmas Orphan, and The Flight of Mehetabel.

Merry Christmas James HK, and also to the CFN collektiv…
Me… I’m still sailing by wind power across our increasingly stormy oceans…(climate change deniers look away now)…. yep the cyclone, hurricane….mistral wind seasons are getting longer and meaner….
Though there are still many remote un-spoilt places where you can float to gunkholing along the way, albeit ones not reached by car…
What’s not to like about that…?
Keep up the excellent weekly prose Jim… and look forward to seeing your 2013 shake on things…
Seasons greetings from a flood and rain battered south west UK!
Ciao bello
A xx

Most people will not be able to make the transition to a simpler, agriculture-based world. I’ve been working hard at learning the skills needed to grow food in my back yard and at a shared community garden for the past two years, and it has been a steep learning curve for me. And that’s during a time of plenty, while I’m healthy, willing and not stressed. In a time of crisis, with hunger looming, when they don’t want to do it in the first place, I reckon that 90% of the people thrown “back to the land” are going to wind up under the ground.
I work with a lot of people who are on various forms of social assistance. The cannot, by virtue of mental or physical lack of functioning, take care of themselves. If your mind is too scattered by schizophrenia, or your body is wracked by birth defects or age, you’re not going to be able to turn the dirt with a hoe and wait patiently for 150 days for that cabbage crop to come in. The World Made By Hand is going to brutish and shorten a lot of lives. Welcome to the Die-off.

We have been intentionally car-free since June 2011.
We live in a walkable neighborhood served by good public transit. I work for that public transit agency. That means for daily transportation we spend only on shoes, umbrellas, and bicycle repairs.
Even though our income is modest, without car expenses, we are comfortable.
Also, walking to the bus stop, and walking to work (6.2 miles round trip) has been a boon to our health.
That money we used to spend on cars, now goes in part toward quality local food.

My lovely wife and I are enjoying Christmas in the beautiful coffee mountains of Costa Rica where we have lived for the last 5 1/2 years. We Are living the “Self sufficient Within Walking Distance” life of ancient royalty (no car) and loving every minute. As a practicing Architect for 45 years and having designed Self Sufficient projects 30 years before the “Sustainable” moniker was ever coined, we are now living the life that I preached decades ago. As we count our blessings this holiday season, we wish you all Pura Vida (pure life) as the Costa Ricans say, and remember, subsistance farming is true “Agripoetry.”

Too late for all of the above nice-to-have ideas. Our money has been stolen by the private bank Federal Reserve,split into a thousand parts and divided up so many times that only those “smart” people know what is going on and make profit. The money as we see it is all fake-fake paper, fake coins painted silver, etc. Hollywood is all fakery and promoting back-to-front filth, debauchery, and perversity, with so-called “strong” women and sissified men who can’t do a real day’s work. Too many millions of brainwashed fools walk the streets thinking all that all what they see today is “normal” and right. Gay marriage is an absurdity, gun-control obviously doesn’t work, and all the politicians and educators can do is rehash the same old lame and tired answers to all problems which they created and allow to fester. The country and the world is a mess. Since Mr. Kunstler likes to make predictions, allow me to make one. Look at the massive fat-problem we have in this country, along with the immorality, smoking, drinking, and now legal dope laws — what happens is that a person’s immune system is weakened. Millions upon millions of people have pathetically weak immune systems. Add to the equation the viruses and germs and bugs who know how to mutate, change, and survive. One mutant strain of HIV or some other bug will harvest millions of people who live “todays” lifestyle. Only the most moral will survive. Merry Christmas and a blessed New Year, even to all the liberals on this blog. Put the Christ back in Christmas. Don’t turn your back on the chance that there is a God, even without proof of God, there is no proof in evolution/no missing link found and just a bunch of ape bones. Something had to initiate the so called big bang. Merry Christmas and Ho Ho Ho. Signing off from the right…

“Do you know why scenes or even just shots of freeways so seldom appear in the movies we watch?”
You must not watch the same movies I do. In particular, I remember vividly the ridiculously long chase scene on a freeway in “The Matrix Reloaded.” That thing was a lot of fun, but it went on forever. Also, “Speed” and its sequel, two movies of nothing but chase scenes. I guess something involving speed has to happen to make a freeway interesting. That, or something funny in a traffic jam.
As for transfer payments, I touched on that over at Crazy Eddie’s Motie News when I noted that one of the larger sources of discretionary transfer payments, the Farm Bill, is held up as part of the partisan gridlock in DC. Without a new Farm Bill, dairy prices will double. Happy New Year!
I also blogged about how agriculture will rebuilt local economies, in particular Detroit’s, twice this week. The Detroit City Council approved the sale of 140 acres of land to Hantz Farms to start the largest urban farm in the country. Detroit is officially serious about urban agriculture.
Other topics this past week included mocking the fake Mayan Doomsday, chronicling gas prices reaching their low for the year, checking in on the miles driven by my family as well as the U.S. population, some of the better, if not good, things to come out of Michigan’s Inflamed Duck session, and Florida hunting feral pythons. In principle, that’s a good idea. In practice, it’s likely to produce a Darwin Award winner. LOL, Florida. My family is glad our daughter moved out of that crazy state and back to Chicago.
Happy Motoring–for now–from Detroit!crazyeddiethemotie.blogspot.com/

Mr. Kunstler,
Haven’t had the gas furnace on with the fireplace insert burning, and most of my backyard is tilled, with all the leaves I could get mixed in.
(Started out with suburban clay 3 years ago and JMG said mix in all the vegetable matter I could.)
A peaceful holiday and New Year, sir.

Thought you guys might enjoy this.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00zy57n
The BBC’s Supersized Earth documentary series featuring techno triumphalism on a scale never before conceived. All rendered in wonderful CGI so you can properly appreciate the extent of the achievements of 21st century industrial society! 3 hours of commentary on the world’s most ridiculous urban engineering projects without ever using the word “sustainable”.
A must see for everyone who enjoys a nice teeth grinding rage at Christmas, or who is looking to reinvigorate their efforts to opt out of the BS circus of mainstream orthodoxy .

reclaiming bricks from a demolished 40-50’s era durham, nc housing lot to use for bordering (~knee high) the ill-defined sidewalk/street margin in front of my house (hope it stifles some traffic noise too)

Nice fantasy. Wouldn’t it be nice to go back to such a world? Alas Mr. Kunstler is dead wrong. We’ll be fracking the entire planet and getting fatter and fatter with genetically created foods for hundreds of years to come.

Jim, can’t wait to see your predictions for 2013.
For an very detailed (and therefore probably quite inaccurate) scenario of life in the Northeastern USA in 2040, see my novel “Inter States,” released online and free in installments via http://interstates2040.wikispaces.com
In both the novel and in my own energy and resilience work, I’m increasingly of the opinion that it’s the middle scale, not small backyard/”by-hand” scale, where important responses to the Long Emergency lie. This includes small farms that support a village, renewable energy on a 0.5 to 10 MW scale, and small businesses that manufacture. The large landowner Bullock in the WMBH novels represents this, but so could town manufactories or a municipal electric company. Watch for lots more of this in the future. A society where everyone raises their own food and produces their own energy is highly inefficient, and may work for some, but is not where we came from (think medieval societies) and is not where we’re going (transition town romantics, beware). The middle scale can be appropriately efficient while also effective and defendable, and is also where knowledge is cultivated, protected, and passed on (think monestaries).
Yet, see how the middle scale is currently being sidelined in modern politics and consumerism. It’s all either about the individual or the large corporations and other large-scale endeavors. What of family farms and small businesses and main streets?
Big mistake!
Merry Christmas!
Ralph

With the exception of a headlamp for my wife, we bought nothing for Christmas this year. All those presents we received were immediately given to the local thrift store. My wife’s mother does not get that we do not want or need any of the crap that she regularly buys from Wal Mart each year. Next year, I will suggest she give the crap directly to someone needy or to the thrift store.
We do have a tree although we are not Christians. But there is some residual feeling of spirituality that we get from the tree and we welcome what should be a true Christmas where we simply celebrate the life of what appeared to be a great and gentle man.
I am not sure that the future world will even be made by hand much less by anything else. The drowths persist and they will probably get worse. There will be less and less food. Perhaps there will be some areas, say the Northwest, where people will be able to scratch out a living.
We are already seriously into overshoot and it seems that Kunstler’s vision of the future will seem rather romantic as opposed to the real future of what will probably be a Mad Max scenario of some sort.

Another excellent post JHK, but I am not so sure we won’t destroy more land for fracking and poison our water tables first.
That will make going back to the future at bit more daunting, I’m afraid. Every time I think of what we are doing to this most beautiful continent in the effort to keep this lifestyle going a little longer, I feel hopeless.
My little ditty for the situation as I see it is:
Strip mine every mountain, frack every stream, syphon out ole’ Gaia till you make her scream!
With that said—I wish all CFNers a happy holiday week and a happy new year.
Alexandra-It was good to see your post. Happy sailing.

We’re making it up as we go along. As a product of Southern California suburban life, I don’t know how to farm. I am ‘handy’, as I’ve worked with my hands for most of my life. My wife and I have been car free since 2008, here in Portland Oregon. We’re not smug: Being car free is do-able here. It’s not quite so easy everywhere.
Anyway, our Christmas involves having a bunch of people over for dinner. My daughter is in from Colorado, two of my wife’s 4 kids (and their kids) live in Portland. And this is Christmas: Minimal gift exchanges (they will favor the little ones), great food, music, games …
We just rented out an upstairs room. Besides the obvious cash infusion, we look forward to learning about another part of the world from our new housemate. I suspect that this arrangement, more common in years past, will be common again.
We work towards carving out a life that makes sense to us, even as we are both over 50. Even before Peak Oil became a common term, the ‘normal’ American Way of life has always seemed absurd to me. I am getting less militant about The Long Emergency (although I can rail with the best of them!). I think of the Zen master who advised not to seek the truth, but, instead, to merely cease to cherish opinions.

James, and fellow cluster fuckers, I’d love to shout out a big Merry Christmas, but under the circumstances….
Yes, looking at freeways, and watching people run from one big box store to the next buying plastic items that will end up in the landfill before next Christmas, is indeed depressing. Lucky for me, I live in a town of 150 people in the middle of a sparsely populated southwestern state. We have a small local economy, and for the last few years, I’ve bought only locally produced items—honey, jellies, art, etc, as Christmas presents. I don’t buy into the whole Christmas scene, but I like the idea of buying thoughtful and useable gifts for my closest friends and family.
What I am grateful for this year, is that I’m already living in a place that will transition more painlessly into a world made by hand. We have a bartering culture in place already. Our village in unincorporated, so we have no local government. We function completely on volunteerism. We have a water cooperative, a fire department, a library, and a community center. We have no law enforcement except for a fake sheriff in an old county sheriff car that gets moved around town to discourage tourists speeding through town. Many of us raise chickens and enough of us have gardens or greenhouses that we have vegetables to share and trade. We have somehow created a culture that works well, without a plan to do so. We get together to play and listen to music at least twice a week. We have a bi-monthly pot luck lunch at our community center. We help each other with the business of living in a variety of ways. We have our problems here but we are, I believe, living in a utopia compared to the way I see most people live.
When I do venture out into “civilization”, I am increasingly appalled by the zombie mentality I see. I find myself back in the trance as well and am tempted to buy things I don’t need. My anxiety shoots up, and my motivation plummets. I return to my little creek bed community and feel incredibly grateful that I took the plunge 20 years ago and moved to this remote and inconvenient location. It insures that anyone who does move here and stays is a bit of an iconoclast. We are facing a long term drought that will threaten our way of life, but I’m betting that most of us here will tough it out and survive, if survival is in the picture for anyone. My advice for any readers out there who are considering bailing out of their unsustainable living situations is do it soon. Time is running out.
Good luck to us all. And thank you JHK for making me think (and laugh) every Monday morning.

Having to scratch out vegetable patches from gravel and sand proves a lot of work, but seeing that it can be done is, in itself, testament to the Earth’s ability to make much out of what appears to be very little. (Rock dust for garden minerals?? You’ve got to be kidding.)
Anywhich, when looking to the suburban subdivisions where my mom lives (built on former productive farm land), all I can think is that these folks better get busy with the practice of horticulture; they’ve actually got the perfect soils for it. Plus that soil has been lying fallow for a good 20 years, and there might be much of it that is not yet poisoned with “weed and grub control” products.
Where I live will once again return to a little-frequented backwater and it will certainly be interesting to see how a community deigns to organize a reasonable attempt at transportation and supply. (Or not.) The Chinese curse is upon us, although very few want to admit it. There’ll be plenty of time for fear and loathing later. In the meantime, there are a lot of “work-arounds” to consider and design. It’s gonna be an engineers’ paradise in the near term, I tell you!

Mr. Kunstler suffers from a classic syndrome called “desert vision.” When in the clear desert air, a distant mountain may appear to be only five miles away when in reality it is 25 miles away. We are blessed with his keen vision that society unfortunately will not see for its own reality until it is too late. Happy Holidays.

Happy Holidays Jim! As to whatwe’re doing differently, our town is working on converting some of the land we recently purchased into growing our own food. Our goal is to become as self-sufficient as possible in that regard. It is part of our version of “A World Made By Hand.” Will keep you posted as to how we’re coming along.

Since dropping out of the corporate life over a decade ago our lives are much simpler and very fulfilling. Our life in a small snowbelt town (less snowy now it seems) in the Great Lakes region revolves around parish, neighborhood and whatever family hasn’t moved away.
My wife and I now share a compact car, have mostly given up traveling and entertainment consists largely of hiking, biking in state parks like Presque Isle and x-c skiing and snowshoeing. Dining out is only for special occasions and the food is actually better, and more enjoyable at home. As our daughter recently graduated from college we are experiencing a sense of freedom that is just wonderful. Our Christmas so far has consisted of concerts and spending time with neighbors and family. Our life is so much happier now than living the soul sucking corporate life that I’d rather gargle with razor blades than return to it.
The life we are now living by choice is one many others will be living by fiat i the future.
Blessings and peace to JHK and the CFN.
djc

Greatmorning all,
One of the biggest questions anyone has for anyone else, from my experience, is “How do you making a living?” This is what I ask myself when passing all the McHouses new and old.
This is the question professionals in my field of expertise ask their clients verbally or on paper.
This is the question on applications for credit and ironically, jobs. This shopping season, more shopkeepers are asking people what they can afford in order to keep the buy/sell balls rolling.
Things are VERY MUCH discounted in my part of the world because people (consumers) are not making enough money to justify the “suggested retail price” and inventories must be dumped to avoid taxes. Suggestions in the markets make me think of a snake hissing in the shopkeepers ears when they know darn well what their local markets can not bear and what something is actually worth (they bought it for a 1/4 of the price). When they say 1% of the country can afford 500$ bags and Ipods this shopping season, that means 99% can not afford such a spirit of giving. Most gift shoppers need these box stores and “suggestions” boldly printed on price tags in order to feel like they can give something of value.
Personally I don’t perceive the value of a handmade sweater as being more than a machine knit sweater. I don’t think that’s what Kunstler is jiving about in his criticism of the markets. It’s nice not having to knit a sweater and machines are very nice to have around to a degree that they don’t become IDOLS or tools for vice. Most weaving is done with machines and has been for 1000s of years.
The retail industry is really what’s in focus here as opposed to the grocer. Shops are really hurting because of shrink and the death of massive unsecured credit cards. They’ve got a really good picture of everyone who has ever shopped with them on their computer databases, security cameras and mail order catalogue lists. They know who has money and who doesn’t and most of us don’t enough to buy 10 toys for everyone after all the turkey dinners and buffets. There is a tremendous amount of information everyone just volunteers that clues everyone else in on how this season is going to go in financial lifestyle way. Austerity. Which doesn’t equal handmade goods and an increase in women cooking and making stuff in order to save the breadwinners money. It simply means we won’t be buying stuff we don’t need from all the stores on the list (not grocery stores). Everyone can agree most of the stuff bought during this giving season is really not necessary to living. It’s a wonder that most jobs are still in the retail industry. That’s what’s going to change soon.
Used to…it was very apparent what everyone did for a living because they were usually very well known for it because they did something everyone needed done but didn’t have time or expertise to do for themselves. They used to live where they worked; farm, tavern, shop, wharf. Our identities have been lost in the industrial age and then found again in the form of what we can buy and where we buy it. I’m a JCPenney girl.
See ya there!

Dropped out 16 years ago, bought 20 acres in the middle of nowhere, with a running stream, and irrigation water. It’s been a lot of work, building a small log house, a barn, goat shed, chicken coop, and garden areas. There is still work to do, but now we’re down to just a cold cellar and a cold smoke house. Hopefully this summer we’ll have the cold cellar done. Now we depend on canning, drying, a freezer, and fermentation to keep our vegetables and meat. We keep our potatoes in a large camping cooler in the barn under hay bales. That kind of works, but a cold cellar will work much better. We have a blacksmith shop, and a leather shop on the place. This year, finally, we eat mostly what we’ve raised or grown. Goat meat is our staple with eggs from the chickens, and occasional lamb or pork from what we’ve raised. We’ve lots of yummy vegetables that we’ve dried, canned, or fermented, and jars full of dried Apples and wild berries. Goats are easiest for us to raise, we turn them loose during the day (they come back in the evening and we lock them up) and we’ve found them to be best. The lions seem to like eating our sheep while not so much the goats. We have a couple of Llamas, and they’ve earned their keep keeping out the Coyotes, and the occasional Lion that wanders through. My wife and I are members of a small community band and we meet every Thursday evening for old time music. Nothing complicated. I play the Fiddle and my Wife plays the Spoons.
We spent the past two days up north, got there on the Interstate, and generally a tough experience. Not used to that kind of fast driving. We’re 70 miles from the nearest Interstate here. We have family in the city and so a trip now and again is necessary or we’d never leave our quiet little part of the world.
Mr. Kunstler, I always enjoy your Monday Morning Musings. I’m 68 by the way and still very much alive. I think life down a bad dirt road has been good for me and my Wife. We sure wouldn’t trade it. Have a nice Holiday and enjoy those you care about.

I’ve spent years trying to live more simply, do the ole’ homesteading bit, live off-grid, grow food, the works. But I’m ready to throw in the towel actually. I live in a rural location, so having a car is a must. As well, the terrain is mountainous and no way am I riding a bike up here. And off-mountain the roads are narrow, windy and downright scary. So I’m totally car-dependent with a Walk Score here of zero.
As well, I’ve beaten my body up growing produce and marketing it to a public that in this area is sparse and has much produce to choose from. Probably only 5% of the public actually attends Farmers Markets and the rest shop at the big supermarkets, which don’t buy from small growers. Honestly, I would have been better off standing in the Farmers Market handing out dollar bills to everyone than growing food and trying to sell it; and my body would hurt less! I grow good food, but there are few good markets here, the waiting lists for those are long, and the lousy markets are just plain lousy.
In this rural area pretty much everyone works elsewhere, with often long commutes. As compared to many places in the US I have a nice community with some great neighbors, but they are all stressed from working long hours, commuting, and dealing with their families, let alone mowing the lawn(can’t forget that!). So it can be a pretty lonely existence trying to live this way.
So as for me, I’m thinking I will sell this place to someone else who wants to take a crack at living this life, and find a way to move to a city and get a job there. I’d guess that being part of a committed couple engaged in this work would have made it go better, perhaps, so long as the relationship was good and the goals were the same.
I do have to say that sometimes, well often, I think that those who haven’t really done this sort of stuff look at it with rose colored glasses. They have absolutely no idea what it’s like to actually grow their own food, live on the power produced by the sun(or not), heat with wood etc. The reality of this might not be what the currently frustrated “cube farm” dweller in the city or the ‘burbs imagines it will be. Yes, there is much to love about this life. But when you have to deal with hard currency in the mainstream world; the car mechanic, the dentist, the car insurance company, healthcare, etc- reality rears its ugly head. The realities of how much farm work one has to do to pay for goods and services off-farm is unreal. Ever stop to consider how many pounds of potatoes one would have to grow to pay for a root canal?
So Jim- maybe we will all end up living this way. In that case, perhaps the doctor,dentist and the local stores will be pleased to be paid in potatoes and beans. But right now we are sure not there, and I’ve spent over 15 years trying to bridge the gap between the two worlds and it’s not working for me. I hope others will be able to do it better. Have a Happy New Year.

One more thing about freeways…
They appear in a lot of movies. One of the most beautiful and appropriate shots of a freeway/highway system appearing in a movie is:
Paris, Texas by Wem Wenders
Then there’s the ton of futuristic movies and armageddon movies that feature highways changing in either a positive hightech way or wasting away or being destroyed. What’s depressing is how much time people have to spend on them in order to work or play. Sadly, most people don’t experience the “open road” much anymore from various reports I’ve seen in major markets. It’s become a fight for life or death! It’s safer just to mail order.

Merry Christmas James!
You are so right in your preaching, but you are missing something, the new power source that is here. The Unified Field has come, in a time of great chaos, the Galt engine is born. And now comes;Galt++
The Temple of Galt++
Part I
Galt and an Objective viewpoint
Who is John Galt? That was the moaning epithet of the old novel; Atlas Shrugged, by the master atheist philosopher Ayn Rand. Galt or Galtism, became a verb that describes a philosopy that the novel was based on, which is called Objectivism. What is Galt? What is ‘Going Galt’?
John Galt discovered a new principle of electricity that allowed motors to run without needing an external source of power, an idea based on the past rumored works of Nickola Tesla. It was about a device that was based on the ideas of free energy or perpetual motion, and the great quest of the book was Dagney Taggerts search for the inventor of this marvelous device. A device she found in pieces in an old factory where John Galt walked out of, destroying his invention in the process, and leaving the broken pieces to the new Marxist management.
He had no fear of them using it for profit, because he completely destroyed it. The phrase “Who is John Galt?” took effect, because when this new regime was announced in a company meeting, he said he didn’t have to abide by these new rules of “to each according to their need, from each according to their ability”. In short, the new management were committed communists, and were going to run their fathers factory with those principles.
John Galt, exercised the right of a free man, to walk out and deny them the use of his labor of love, without compensation. Naturally, the company and the factory fell into ruin. But the phrase “Who is John Galt?”, became a symbol of the rights of the individual versus the collective mind.
In our day, this novel has become a Bible of sorts, a Bible of capitalism versus socialism. But, was it? Really? Was the lady Ayn Rand a capitalist, or a closet marxist? One thing for sure, she was a committed atheist and a drug addict. In her greatest tome, Atlas Shrugged, most people think, defined the good of capitalism and the evil of socialism, but those same people do not stop to think that both ideologies are the ideologies of the extremes, and both are based in the pursuit of self interest, it is the people and methods they use that are evil or good. There were evil hearted capitalists, and good hearted socialists within the pages, but there was something missing in that great tome, the pursuit of self interest knows no ideology, and true evil never surrenders in half measures to total conquest.
The opposite of The Right of Galtism, Objectivism, Capitalism, Individualism, and its political extremes; corporateism and fascism, it is the power of the Individual Mind, is The Left of the Collective mind, that lives by The Tragedy of the Commons. It is the power of The Family and sharing, the power of the heart over the mind, the good of the many outweighs the good of the few, or the one.
And it sounds wonderful that we must preserve The Commons for all to use in perpetuity, until it is imposed by the barrel of a gun, by being made the law of the land. When this is done, there is no more familial sharing, or common good in support of the Tragedy of the Commons, there is only human nature, resentment and backlash. Because once the subjective heart of the collective takes a hold on society, there is no stopping it until it self destructs.
This philosophy is spoken in varying monikers that are always changing, changing with the times in order to make itself more palatable or sellable. It goes from the extremes of Marxism, Communism, Communitarianism and Socialism, to the less obvious names that people refer to themselves by; The liberals, progressives, post modernists, a raft of monikers designed to soften the blow that they are Leftists. They use the tool of feelings to get what they want, because they are not inventors or producers, but looters of corporations, and moochers off the government teat.
It is this way not simply because they are evil, but because they are less endowed with the intellectual capacity and strength of character to take risks, build companies, work hard, or otherwise fend for themselves in a harsh world, and because their world is about their feelings, not their minds. Their minds are thus used to manipulate the feelings of others in aquiring, or looting, or mooching off the productive endeavors of others.
This again, is not because they are evil, but because it is the response to a world system designed to restrict and control money. The Leaders of the left will use any emotional tool, primarily designed to inflict guilt, by using the subjective words of “basic fairness”, “fair share” or attack the Right as “selfish” and “greedy”, to extract recompense for their followers, who are collectively known as The Moochers.
They love the left simply because they get a free lunch, and who wouldn’t want a free lunch? Unfortunately, the world doesn’t work that way, and those who get rich, usually get rich the old fashioned way, they EARN it, and will do whatever it takes to protect what they earned.
to continue reading;http://pipermichael.wordpress.com
The Temple of Galt++

It is times like this that we are compelled to search for anything positive amidst the non-stop blather of pseudo news and activities. I ditto the comments about lots and lots of idle hand these days but I see a future that puts most of them not only into action but doing work that leads us out of our descending spiral of denial and decadence. Work that builds strong and resilient local communities while re-weaving a social fabric which once made America a powerful force for good in the world.
Tell me, what does a 75 year old politically savvy female Governor, an precocious five-year-old and a welcoming message form a distance civilization have in common? Read From Here to There: A Story About America’s Future” and find out. It will change your perspective about what is possible.http://www.fromhere-tothere.org

Speaking of frustration in our modern day world with depressing highways and looming fiscal cliffs, how does a person lock his keys in the car and then proceed to lose his cell phone, all on the same day? “Only I, Only I”, The Dickhead lamented…
But to answer the question, it’s a matter of being a moron before locking the keys in the car (and that magnet thing that contained a spare set of keys for the Dickhead emergency moment was no longer under the car; I suppose it’s a good idea to check on the spare set, oh, say, at least every year or two) and then turning into a distracted imbecile (did the remainder of my brain roll out of my ear when I tilted my head to look for the magnetized key container no longer there?) in the aftermath of the first snafu.
And now “Dickhead”, otherwise knows as “The Moron” and “The Imbecile”,will spend time and money today paying for his mental vacation of yesterday. Please, bring of the day and hour of “Made By Hand” sooner rather than later; I’m much better at that.

Merry Christmas Jim and all you CFN’ers ! 2013 is shapping up to be a seriously challenging year. The tools of the establishment will be out in force. All issues will be on the table and hopefuly the best side will win.
Again, Merry Christmas.

Oh, that old blue cheese Ayn Rand nonsense. The atheist cultist who over-reacted to what happened to her father in Russia.
The banksters have lots’o money. Do they make money the old-fashioned way, by “working” for it?
No they got $14 Trillion from the fed to keep this global extractionist inverted communism going.
They are in the process of creating an even greater derivatives bubble than 2008.
The rich around the world are keeping their money in tax shelters to the tune of $23 Trillion kept out of national economies around the world.
They are making their money by privatizing national treasure around the world by getting countries into debt.
Yes indeed, for the lowly tax-payers, anything they get back from the govt. is socialism, when the corporations or JOB-CRE-A-Tors get special interest perks and tax breaks– that’s capitalism. With all those Bush era tax breaks their job creation is paltry!
Capitalism doesn’t exist in the form you imagine…

It is a lot easier to be sympathetic to the view that somehow the suburban prosperity model of human development can be sustained when one considers that the sustainable alternative is one that will only be able to sustain a small fraction of the current human population.

Here’s what the folks at Economic Collapse Blog are on about. (Sounding out a warning.) Sure, they’re hollering into a hurricane, but I commend them for trying to cut through the roaring wind and rain of the perception managers.informationclearinghouse.info/article33415.htm
My holiday wish for youses this year?
“The very Best of Luck doing something REAL!”
(Paper-shufflers and electronic accounting tricksters are on their own.)

Since I left corporate crapola in 2011 to become a full-time Cabinetmaking student, my blood pressure and weight are down and energy and mood are up. My work is donated and displayed all over town to support 3 outstanding nonprofits including a children’s hospital, a food bank and a domestic violence crisis center. All I had to do to accomplish this transition is be willing to be on my feet all day, get my hands seriously dirty (with wood dust) and renounce my MBA from Harvard, and that institution, as the anachronistic, maladaptive crock of shit that they are. While I understand that our young adults today face a worse situation than my peers did trying to start our careers, is it possible that a transformation in their expectations, along the lines of skilled trades and entrepreneurism rather than misc. white collar bullshit, might allow more of them to find their calling?

And you support yourself how? My guess is you’ve saved up quite a bit over your years in the corporate world to do this. It’s great how many people are willing to ditch it all and live the “simple life” on the proceeds of their former life, but just how are the rest of us supposed to do this? And just how do the twenty-somethings accomplish any of this while paying off their student loans at the same time?
And yes, I share your views that the trades can be a good place to train and work, but just how do indebted former political science and studio arts majors finance such a thing while owing what they owe? And the rest of the country with minimal or no equity on their mortgage and little savings, supporting a family and just scraping by on their current jobs?

For our Christmas Eve we will share a ham we raised ourselves with a neighbor and his little daughter.
Unfortunately, our three children all live in other parts of the state and, for the first time ever, will not be coming home for Christmas. We are sad but also welcome the minimal fuss along with avoiding all the unnecessary hype. No mall shopping for us,(we never did that anyway) no last minute agony over what to buy for so and so. I have decorated with a half price pointsettia in pink, not red, and have hung some “papel picado” with Nativity scenes. We do have Christmas lights on the front porch AND on the chicken house. It looks very festive!
Hubby and I do not usually exchange gifts and we buy only one gift for each of our children. And….it’s always something useful and helpful, such as cookware or good knives. Over the years we have equipped their kitchens pretty well. They all learned to cook from us.
We used to take the kids to the Christmas Eve candlelight service but since we moved way out in the country 11 years ago, we don’t do that any more. Maybe we should…..it was so nice when we did. But…it’s snowing hard and the roads will be tricky. Home is where we like to be.
So….here we’ll be by the wonderful woodstove with our doggies and neighbors and drinking eggnog and thinking about our other neighbors and our children. It will be just lovely!

Probably few readers of these commentaries realize that JHK started his career as the lead actor in the 1965 TV show, Green Acres, under the stage name of Eddie Albert. (Ah, the sixties!) But my
sentiments remain closer to those spelled out by Eva Gabor. And if anybody comes looking for me in the future World Made By Hand, ask for the last man on the freeway. Those lonely headlines in the
distance of a setting sun, when all the farmers are beginning their days of unending labor under the night skies. Although even then it
will be too hot.

“We will no longer be prisoners of the freeway or hostages of the WalMart corporation.”
Walmart Argentina began operation in 1995. The Avellaneda, a Province of Buenos Aires received the first superstore. Walmart celebrated the grand opening of a distribution center in Moreno City, Buenos Aires province in September.
Now a wave of looting and rioting, which started on Thursday, December 20, has spread throughout Argentina reaching Buenos Aires province on Friday.
Two people were killed in Rosario, Argentina’s third city, and police fired rubber bullets and tear gas at hundreds of looters to stop them attacking supermarkets in Buenos Aires’ outskirts on Friday. The government blames trade unions for encouraging the unrest, claiming that it was not driven by poverty. The looting started in the Patagonian ski resort of Bariloche on Thursday. Looters across the country ransacked supermarkets for toys, electronic goods, as well as food.
Raiders stormed another supermarket owned by the local unit of Wal-Mart. Looters made off with flat-screen televisions and other goods.
Daniel Scioli, governor of a Buenos Aires area province says the theft of big screen TVs proves the riots were not due to hunger.
Have yourself a merry little Christmas.
***
Looks like some of those new agricultural jobs are almost here.

Car free? Only because others truck / ship goods into yr big city, which is a sanctuary city.
Does P’land cooperate with homeland security?
It was not when it had that ‘big Christmas scare’.
In the mid 1980s a friend moved to Oregon.
He mentioned the violent Mexican gangs in P’land.
That was almost 30 years ago.
Oregon can only be much more ‘diverse’ now.

You say weaving has been done by machines for 1000s of years…but we haven’t HAD weaving machines for thousands of years, only a few hundred years. Weaving machines were one of the first machines of the industrial revolution, and that was not so long ago. Before that, weaving was done on hand looms, in homes. The weaving machines were what the Luddites were complaining about. Don’t they teach history in schools anymore?

What about the interstates in the film ‘The Road’, taken from Cormac McCarthy’s novel of the same title? On those interstates there is no longer any ‘Happy Motoring’ and it is hard to read the roadsigns. And ‘On the Road’ is coming out just this week. Oh, wait, the system wasn’t built yet when Kerouac and Cassady were driving around the United States.
–Panic in Year Zero

Sold our McMansion a year ago, bought 2.5 acres in rural Olympia WA, have been working on infrastructure all year, added chickens, rabbits, turkeys, added an apartment for rental income, fenced a huge garden, rebuilt the barn, ran water and electricity to the outbuildings, cut 9 cords of firewood, installed an efficient wood heater, and we are still working at more….. We feel good about the progress so far but much more is needed. I have three large compost piles going that are getting a nice dose of rabbit poo! Merry Christmas…

I have on the borderline between traditional neighborhood development – a Main Street district in Caldwell, New Jersey – and auto suburbia – shopping centers in neighboring West Caldwell, where I live. The municipal borders are so drawn that I can walk to the center of Caldwell from my West Caldwell home in ten minutes, but to use my own library I have to drive two miles across town. Most of the stores I have to go to happen to be in West Caldwell, near the library, in a town center defined by shopping centers and supermarkets, but at least it’s a defined center and not a random assemblage of commercial development like in nearby Morris County. my idea of living differently is walking to the post office or grocery stroe in Caldwell when it’s feasible. Ironically, the Caldwell library is within walking distance as well, but I’m not a Caldwell resident. I get to NYC by bus – no train service in Caldwell, not since 1966. I did my Christmas shopping at a mall with a Barnes and Noble (because B&N’s record department is the only place left to buy a CD), through the Internet, and at a library, where I bought a used book for 25 cents. I went Christmas shopping in nearby Montclair, New Jersey, simply they have an attractive, walkable downtown – but apart from the aforementioned 25-cent book I bought, I didn’t bu anything there. I couldn’t find what I wanted. In 1979, when I was fourteen, I lived in Jenkintown, Pennsylvania, and its walkable downtown area had every kind of store – even a Strawbridge and Clothier department store – where I could do all my Christmas shopping on foot without my dad having to drive me anywhere. The late seventies were actually a terrible time to be fourteen, but at least in Jenkintown, PA, there was that.

A couple of years ago I put a lot of effort to grow as much food as possible on my 33×122 (minus a very modest house) city lot. I started early in the season, put in quite a bit of work and had a very decent crop of potatoes, squash, lots of beans plus an assorted variety of other edibles including even some hazelnuts and a few walnuts from a tree on the city land. But what I quickly discovered was this: when it comes to surviving on your own food in the city, forget it. Just end your life when things get tough because otherwise you’ll be facing a protracted starvation that will end just the same way.
All the food that I grew looked impressive only in the context of having a supermarket within a walking distance. Had I had to rely on my own crops, they would have amounted to probably no more than a couple of weeks of decent eating, possibly less. I could have put in even more work, had chicken or rabbits, maybe even squeezed in a pig if there was a collapse of the municipal enforcement apparatus. But even if I increased my yield tenfold – a highly improbable scenario, myself and my family would have been nothing but walking skeletons within 6-9 months and dead within a year.
So to all you dreaming folks, in this coming year I wish you a lot of dreaming of the lyrical World Made by Hand, but hope the reality of everyday life still includes a supermarket, modern dentistry and law enforcement. Because when the collapse finally does happen, It’s more likely than not that you and I and tens of millions of others will simply perish in the ensuing hunger and violence. As abhorrent as the freeways may be, the prospect of seeing your family slowly starve to death is infinitely more so.
Happy 2013 to all.

Merry Holidays JHK, and a sincere thanks for helping me to regain a little balance and order my thoughts away from the weekly confusion that inevitably seeps in from a world run by hungry ghosts.
Living differently for us is in part done without an automobile and alt trans of the two wheeled variety.alttransbikes.blogspot.com/

just because you refuse to see that whites have been THE GLOBAL CANCER on humanity. – Assoka
You defend your idiocies with ever greater idiocies.
Only whites this, only whites that. Grow a brain.
European civilization leapfrogged others in many ways but what about when European civilizations lagged other non white, non European civilization?
What about when non white, non European peoples used their civilizational superiority in areas such as food production, military techniques, metallurgy to perpetrate outrages that Europeans were incapable of by virtue of their civilizational inferiority? Do you call the non white and non Europeans a “cancer on humanity”?
Do you call the brown skinned peoples and yellow skinned peoples a “cancer” for using social organization, technology and war fighting prowess that far exceeded that of Europe for a long time?
You don’t. That particular racist insult is reserved for caucasians. Like so much of the other diseased crap that you post (thinking that you’re being hip and provocative) this nonsense is old, old, old and it’s been festering and stinking up the halls of academe for generations now.
Big fat fucking fail College Boy. Your racist posts are unoriginal, illogical, unthinking, incoherent and ignorant. Humanity is far worse off now and always has been because of the racist spew of idiots.
It’s much more toxic than guns because this idiocy infects people’s thinking. A gun is just inert metal and plastic until some idiot infected by idiot ideology from some other idiot picks up the gun and acts.
So buzz off. You’re making the world a more hazardous place than it needs to be. You stink up the internet and you aren’t adding to the common wisdom, you’re subtracting from it.

I gather from your link and your posts every week that you are very much interested in esoteric spirituality. I also seem to recall you using the term “integral” which makes me think you are a Ken Wilber fan.
Well, I share these interests with you. However, as someone who studied Wilber for years and participated in an online Wilber forum years ago, I think that he, and a lot of similar authors/theorists are way, way too optimistic about the future.
In Awakening Earth: Exploring the Evolution of Human Cuture and Consciousness, Duane Elgin at least explores the worst-case scenarios in a way Wilber does not, and Elgin’s extremely prescient book was written in 1993! When I read the book in 1994, I already saw the beginning of the worst-case scenarios coming true and I still see therm coming on.
So, just wanted to let you know that though I share a similar vision, I think – having read your posts here off and on for a few years – that you too are overly optimistic. In other words, I think it is going to be a much rougher ride than what you seem to me to believe.

Washington — The U.S. economy grew at an annual rate of 3.1 percent over the summer.
** Exports increased
** Consumers spent more
** State and local governments added to growth for the first time in three years.
The Commerce Department’s third and final estimate Thursday of growth for the July-September quarter was revised up from its previous estimate of a 2.7 percent annual growth rate.Growth in the third quarter was more than twice the 1.3 percent growth rate in the April-June quarter.
We can all say the words: ECONOMIC RECOVERY
Can we all give Obama a thank you for four years of hard work?
( … with zero cooperation from the Republicans who only wanted to bring Obama down and failed to prevent His re-election)
The World Made By Hand might have to wait a while. The economy doesn’t seem to be cooperating with a doom scenario.

outlaw,ban all automobiles–every month over 600 children die in car crashes-20,000 injured per month-2600 adults die every month–its a war out there–we make such a big deal about the school shooting-that happens every day on the hiways–people can’t drive-allow only buses,trucks–

Thank you, Kitaj.
Yes, I read a lot of Wilber in the 80s and 90s. After reading SEX, ECOLOGY, SPIRITUALITY (great book!) and INTEGRAL SPIRITUALITY, I haven’t kept up.
I continue to be an optimist, even more so since the world did not end on Dec. 21!
I’m betting we will go right off the fiscal cliff on Jan. 1 … and it won’t be a disaster … just as JHK has had Wiley Coyote off the cliff and treading air for at least eight years now after that Y2K “close call”.
🙂

Merry Xmas ClusterFuckers!
This Christmas season has been great so far now that I implemented my strategy of not driving unless absolutely necessary. The longest stretch without the car has been a few three day stints. It also has helped that I am back in school this year and have a six week holiday break to devote my time to the kids while my wife does the work to pay the bills this year. It is sunny today with snow in the mountains of New Mexico, the kids and I are about to deliver homemade cookies to the neighbors. My goal for 2013, besides expanding the garden and chickens is to avoid driving and plan ahead. All the best from New Mexico!

Reality is often not pretty. I know from personal experience how hard it is to grow your own food and even still bought plenty from the store. And years such as this one, where late spring frosts wiped out most of the tree fruit and an influx of Asian exotic pests wiped out much of the late season snall fruit, well, thank god for grocery stores. It scares me though how many people really believe they and their families could make it like this though. If JHK’s World Made by Hand came to pass anytime soon, a whole lot of people would die.
If we have any hope of transitioning to a more localized existence where local agriculture is a big piece of the picture, we need to prepare for that. It won’t happen in any nice way otherwise, and even still it might not be too pretty.

I read The Long Emergency a few years ago and it was enlightening to me. I have personally made few preparations for the LE but I believe that it is in our future. I also think that as a society, we will not prepare…as you have pointed out, nobody in power is interested in even admitting there’s a problem, much less taking steps to address it. We will be dragged kicking and screaming into the future.
I don’t wish for it or look forward to it, but I am becoming ready for it (mentally at least). Every day, I see the consumerism, the auto-mania, the ugliness of the suburban/big box/freeway landscape and it reminds me that this is a way of life with no future.
I have not moved off the grid, developed manure piles, given up my car or learned how to make my own clothes…yet. But in 2013 I resolve to take my own action to prepare. Part of it is accepting that big change is coming and becoming part of the community of people who share that belief. As you said, we’re sleepwalking into the future, and it’s really time to get up.
I appreciate your insights and wish you a happy new year.

Four years ago bought just under 2 acres, on a small river, in a town of 2,000 souls at the base of the Cascades about 50 miles northwest of Seattle WA. Rejuvinated the old farm house, and it’s root cellar, and built a small greenhouse. The planted 18 fruit trees and created a 40′ x 50′ veggie garden. Bus to the city & airport takes a long time but is doable. The Great Northern trains go thru towm (past the site of the train station)using the mountain pass to the east. Altogether a pleasant place to live out my life. My children live in nearby towns and if push comes to shove i can feed them.
My land-line DSL internet connection keeps me connected with as much information as I can bear. If it ever went away that would be a devastating loss – especially monday mornings when JHK would not be there.
Good Luck to all.
Woody
_____________________

When the Lamb opened the third seal, I heard the third living creature say, “Come and see!” I looked, and there before me was a black horse! Its rider was holding a pair of scales in his hand. Then I heard what sounded like a voice among the four living creatures, saying, “A quart of wheat for a day’s wages, and three quarts of barley for a day’s wages, and do not damage the oil and the wine!
just sayin

JHK,
I think you’re wrong; we’ll never see that World Made by Hand. If the data coming in is correct the human experiment should be pretty much over by mid century because of climate change. The feed back loops are kicking in and things will accelerate from here. Already Arctic methane releases have gone exponential. Be prepared to see an ice free Artic before the end of this decade. Can you say albedo? Enjoy your Christmas everybody, especially the victims of superstorm Sandy.

Merry Xmas to all and even if you oppose Xianity for some reason you surely must appreciate the one day of utopian longing for peace on Earth.
I would say the Left in these days is as reactionary as the Right. Few have adjusted to this new reality but its there.

The real secret to survival is acorns. Live near the Oaks and live. Become a Druid of survival. Chickens and rabbits, also friends, chickens and rabbits. Chicks for the eggs, and rabbs for the meat. Yes you must learn to kill again. It will be good training for killing other “things”.

In one youtube, he came right and out said that he doesn’t support Democracy since most people are fascists. His model is Statist, probably the United Nations version of Globalism.
He knows Bill and Hillary so that tells you just about everything you need to know. He knows the environment is fucked – the answer is to herd everyone into the cities and leave the countryside to big farma and the Elite for their playground. Pretty ugly, eh?
Of course the big hush about Race. Gobos pretend that were all equal. No doubt most of them know that it’s a lie, but what an excellent way to destroy Nations! The West has to die before their “Terrible Beauty” can be born.
Orwell was right: it’s come down to the Big Three: Oceania (NATO), Eurasia, and Eastasia. Each of these has their own version of Globalism – although they are pretending to cooperate for the time being.

Great movie by Alex Jones and survival expert Joel Skousen on where to relocate to. Also some good conspiracy information focusing on the Big Three and not secret societies.youtube.com/watch?v=mrHrG19URo4

The ICH reprint does not do the original justice. All seventy five facts are linked to full articles.
My best Christmas was when Ms Dog & I volunteered at a restaurant that opened to provide free meals to homeless people on Christmas Eve. There is a lot of despair out there. A lot of people need help.
This year I won’t be able to do something like that, personal circumstance. Next year I will.

A lovely thought to imagine the freeways and overpasses gradually crumbling into rubble. Hmm, actually, they already are crumbling. So, let’s get busy enjoying the collapse.
Our Christmas dinner: a roast goose born, raised and slaughtered on our farm, fresh from the garden turnips candied with some fig preserves from the summer harvest, greens (turnips) and bread. We’ll wash it down with a decent French red because my muscadines make crap sweet wine. So until that day I’ll still spend my greenbacks for good vino.Our best to you and yours. wingedelmfarm.com/blog/

Anyone out there a fan of Iris DeMent? Google her song “Wasteland of the Free” and hear a hard-driving musical take on what Jimbo has been clusterfucking about for years now. She comes to Minnesota next spring and I have my tickets! Merry Christmas and keep the faith.

We live on a small farm in the hill country. we have lived here for almost twenty years. our farm is powered by us and a family of horses. we produce over 80% of our food and all our heat and cooking fuel.
Christmas has became a low key affair because we don’t need a lot of things and don’t want to spend the currency.
Our world is already pretty much “made by hand” and most things in stores are pretty shabby anyway.

I have milked cows for over forty years and have been a faithful reader ever since a town gadfly sent me the introduction of The Long Emergency 6 years ago. Have tried to switch to a more sustainable ag yet find it difficult to maintain the cash flow needed to buy health insurance and property taxes. Own a beautiful farm though and probably most afraid of changes in land tenure agreements that could come down the pike. Most of my fellow town residents don’t have a clue.
Our two Indian casinoes are hurting and expect big layoffs or making more people part-time as they both are having money problems and are dead except for the weekends.
JHK I enjoy your writing and look forward to Mondays.

Well, it sounds wonderful Lar. You’re living the life I do nothing but dream about now. I have a few more long years left in the rat race before I can collect my cheese.
It appears to me that people are starting to get it. They are coming to the conclusion that the goal of Global Governance is Population Control. Jim describes an idyllic result while I tend to believe in an apocalyptic outcome. I don’t believe our global elite resemble Santa Claus as much as they do the Grinch, and an unrepentant one.
Merry Christmas to all. And may He return again soon.

Retired and moved to the boonies, 10 months ago. On a very small fixed income and no savings. I only drive into town 2 or 3 times a month. Fell into a sweet deal as far as a living situation goes. Splendid isolation, but neighbors and landlord (who I’ve known for 20+ years) at hand.
It has been a “year of wonders.” I’ve learned to do things I’ve never done before and never thought I’d do. Everything from helping some friends “process” some chickens to vaccinating my own cat. Canning and freezing up produce. Did some farm sitting.
Most of the year was taken up with general clean up and reclaiming the place from the blackberries. With the help of two goats borrowed from a neighbor. Compost bin is perking along.
Goals for this year: secure a garden area/chicken run from the coyotes, rabbits and deer. There’s an old horse corral and shed that will give me a good start. Build a food dryer.
Christmas if pretty much a non-event. It’s been nice. Since I haven’t had tv in years, am almost an orphan and don’t go to town much, the holidays aren’t “in my face” all the time.
I really don’t expect to make it through any kind of “keyhole” event. But in the meantime, I’m happier and healthier than I’ve ever been. So it goes. Lew

Hola from Uruguay. We moved to this very agrarian country 4 months ago. While we’re still getting settled and finding a new home, we are buying most of our food at the neighborhood ferias; kind of like a farmers market, but includes housewares, clothing, etc. Most of the produce is grown or produced within about 50 kilometers. Not the kind of variety we had in Oregon, but the quality is actually better.
The growing environment is nearly perfect here, as the rainfall is distributed equally throughout the months. The temperatures allow for easy year round growing, too. Fruit and nut trees begin to produce very early. We have begun to adapt to the rural Uruguayo way of living: doors open early in the morning year round; layers of clothing pealed off as the day warms up the house; cooking on an outside wood fired grill and oven, and eating outside whenever the weather allows.
It’s 33C today, which is very warm for Christmas Eve. We don’t use air-conditioning as we intend to acclimate to these new weather cycles. It actually means closing up the house early (closing window shutters and doors), and venturing out fewer times, while getting caught up on inside projects.
And it means slowing down; playing the accordion; mending older clothing; tending to the potted garden that we have for now; getting to know the wise 82 year old caballero next door, who’s teaching DiAnna about the native plants and about living in rural Uruguay.
Feliz Navidad to all.

Hey LLB,
Just got home and thought I’d check out CFN—So great to see your post. Glad to hear your year has gone well and wishing you the best.
Your voice is missed on this blog.
LB (new name since I was banished from the site this yr.)

dmiller said, “I think you’re wrong; we’ll never see that World Made by Hand. If the data coming in is correct the human experiment should be pretty much over by mid century because of climate change. The feed back loops are kicking in and things will accelerate from here. Already Arctic methane releases have gone exponential. Be prepared to see an ice free Artic before the end of this decade. Can you say albedo? ”
ALBEDO.
What is it? It is the property of a material to reflect or absorb energy from incoming photons.
The Ice and snow on the caps have a high albedo; most of this energy is reflected away.
But take a look at the scale on en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albedo
The water that will replace the ice has a much lower albedo. This means that the sunlight will impart a greater amount of energy to the material.
Calculations across such a large expanse of area multiplied by the increase in stored energy equals the amount of energy released by 400,000 nuclear bombs like one dropped on Hiroshima, every day.
This cycle:
1. albedo reduction
2. absorption of heat
3. melting of reflective ice
leads to
4. the absorption of heat
5. the melting of more ice
in a loop that continues indefinitely until the albedo can no longer be lowered. It will no longer be there. The Earth will continue to absorb more energy until things reach a new equilibrium. This sounds deceptively peaceful. But what it means is destruction. What do we care if animals are under pressure? What difference does it make if a plant is stressed from unusual conditions? We’re about to find out. We’re about to find out.

Jim has written hauntingly beautiful columns in the last few weeks – beautiful in their liquid poetry and visual art. But this week it is the posts that I have enjoyed the most, responses to his request to hear how we are living differently. I am impressed at the various localized ways readers are living.
Here at the Ranch, we former suburbanites have cut back on Christmas shopping, and most of what I sent to friends were baskets of food: organic wild honey, Peruvian olives and Sachi Inchi oil, cacao butter, all sustainably farmed. We are tending the fires in the old wood stove in our greenhouse, and can see red tomatoes growing with freezing temperatures outside. We have two deep wells and the water flows abundantly. We’ve invested in wind and solar with diesel generators as back-up. As off-the-grid homesteaders, we will scale back on energy usage if diesel is becomes unavailable.
We are well-armed and do not intend on disarming no matter how bad Obama and the Chinese want us to. If you don’t have the right to defend yourself, you have no rights at all.
One of our goals for 2013 is to get to know our neighbors — closest couple is two miles away. We’ve had no time before now because we are four untrained city folk learning to live a whole new (old?) way of life. I spend time making herbal tinctures and decoctions, and stocking up on the supplements and homeopathics that make the current inhospitable, super germ-laden, irradiated environment more survivable. The latest is mistletoe berry harvesting as it is a known cancer cure – I will make tinctures from them. One of our neighbors hasn’t been to town for three years. He has several greenhouses, and is satisfied to stay away from the noise and commotion. His wife goes in about every two weeks.
When you walk in our front door, it is the 19th century. Old West and Victorian. We play an 1890 pump organ with gorgeous sound coming from the bellows, whiskey is behind the big oak bar with brass foot rests, wood floors underneath, and the sound of the 1890’s German grandfather clock chiming, 1860 Colt Army 44, and 1872 Remington shotgun on the wall behind a restored and functioning 1906 Round Oak wood stove adjacent to the plum-colored and oak-carved Victorian sofa and fringed lamps. I guess we are fonder of many aspects of the 19th century than the 21st. To get to our gate, you drive 12 miles over ranch dirt roads off of a lonely highway that goes through hills and valleys here in Northern Arizona.
Some of our friends and family think we’re crazy to have made the choice we did five years ago, but more and more of them are becoming envious. They call us lucky. We were lucky to have had the money to change lifestyles, but lots of them do too, and they don’t. We’ve also worked harder than we knew was possible, and we’ve had a lot of bad luck and unfortunate encounters with our own stupidity along the way, but we’ve kept going. Why? Because we saw a reality that demanded change. As a huge benefit, we’ve found that this lifestyle is satisfying and rewarding.
Thank you for the posts sharing your inspirational lifestyles. It’s people like Jim, and certain posters, who make us feel less alone. Blessings of the Season to kindred spirits wherever you are.

A HAND MADE WORLD? NOT BY CHOICE!
Ah James, you dream such lovely dreams! But it ain’t gonna happen, my friend – or rather it IS going to happen but the transition will be murder – literally.
We, on the North American continent, are not agrarian any more. We are no more able to survive in the manner of our ancestors than we are able to sprout wings and fly. Not only do 95% of us not know mustard seeds from rabbit droppings, we don’t want to know.
Pretty much most of us know that what we’ve got going is in serious trouble. It is no secret that even the elite, with their incredible riches, is expecting a major crash in the near future. Their preparations are well under way in various places around the world, you may be sure of that.
For the rest of us? Well, for the rest of us it will be survival of the luckiest. Think for a moment of what you know of human nature as it is represented by us. Leave out for a moment those people of other nations and cultures.
The largest portion of us (about 95%) will not prepare for the coming collapse other than to get a gun and some ammo. The few who are preparing by getting a bit of land and learning to grow crops for themselves and their families are signing their death warrants by doing so. This applies to those communities who are also becoming self sufficient.
Our cities have an average of 3 days supply of food on hand. Now, using what you know of American style human nature, what do you suppose will happen when that three days is up and the food is gone?
Do you expect that the 90% of our population living in urban settings will just quietly die? Or that they’ll “somehow survive” for long enough to plant crops? Plant what? Urban people have no seeds. And even if they did have seeds, where in hell do you plant enough food for the population of a major city? And who knows how to plant seeds in the first place?
You know bloody well what will happen. When a few hundred million hungry people ask themselves, “where can I get some food?” The obvious answer is “in the country.” And out they’ll come. Tens of millions of them in a flood of hunger; most of them probably armed to the teeth.
How long will you and your little farm last in the face of that mob of people determined to eat anything edible. They’ll eat everything you’ve got; everything. They’ll make locusts look like pikers. You’ll be lucky if they don’t eat you.
If, by some miracle, they leave you alive, you’ll have little choice but to join them as they sweep outward IF you are young and healthy enough to stay in the vanguard. If not, just stay where you are and make peace with your coming demise.
To keep this short, about 90% of our present population will not survive the first two years. It will be made up of two types, raiders and defenders. And the ratio of defenders to raiders will be about 1 to 200. Very, very few communities will be able to both survive and defend their territories. And the raiders will die trying to take those territories. They’ll have no other choice. They’ll have no knowledge of how to survive otherwise and if they’re going to die from hunger they’ll decide to die trying to take food from others.
Yes, we’ll end up with a Hand Made World…. but it won’t be from foresight and preparation. In fact those who do prepare by the sensible means available to them will likely be among the first victims. It’ll be because, in the end, it will be the best that those who survive can do. And most of us will never live to see it.
People such as yourself who advocate returning to a simpler time have it right. It would definitely be a better way to live. But we’ve already gone past that stage of development. We’ll only return to it through a total collapse of our present system.
Oddly enough, our only real hope, as nearly as I can figure, is to move ahead. Yeah, I know. It looks pretty bleak up ahead too. We seem to be heading for a theologically loaded fascist oligarchy.
So we’re caught between a rock and a hard place. But, trying to go backwards is no good because if we do that, we’ll just “make progress” again and return to this situation once more in the future. So I opt for going ahead. Even the worst of futures will involve change and mankind has the potential to learn and change for the better. Not a giant hope by any means, but there it is; we go forward or we go back.
We do live in “interesting times,” don’t we?

Thanks Jim
We’re mainly making stuff this year. Mostly we’re building onto our shanty in the woods of northern New Mexico, learning to grow food, still making our own biofuel, axial flux wind turbine is still powering the entertainment system. Happy Holidays and peace on Earth —- visit my quasi-sustainable lifestyle website if y’all like http://outfitnm.com

Oh you haven’t heard? The British were eporting large quantities of food from Ireland during the Famine. Only the potato crop failed, not the milk, barley, oats, and meat. But the Catholic peasants were dependent on the potato – such was their portion…
That’s what I was trying to tell the Arch Druid and his followers: losing a war can have very serious consequences.
Meditate on the fact that life feeds off life. You’re doing it even now – killing the bacteria that would kill you. Many Tibetan Masters eat meat as vegtables are hard to come by in that climate. I grant you vegetarianism is nice and perhaps appropriate for many during normal times. But such a thing cannot be a hard moral precept like No abortion.

Marriage is primarily for children – who don’t need King & King or Heather Has Two Mommies. All of that is garbarge and opposed to Nature. If Homos want to live together, fine. And yes, they should have all the same legal and financial benefits. But why call it marraige and let them destroy the lives of innocent children?

Ah a sheepdog appears amidst the sheep! Yes, to all you have said. Some interesting scenarios are possibe like well organized Black Gangs from Philidelphia setting themselves up as Lords over the Amish farmers.
Joel Skousen says best to get one fuel tank away from the cities and a few miles away from major roads to avoide most of the scavengers. The hard core will still be coming though.
The other option is just to do nothing and hope the Elite’s plan incudes you. They do have a plan for reducing the world’s population and renewing the Earth. But it will mostly be for them and in any case, their plan involves massive die offs such as the one you’re describing. Maybe they will attempt to hold a few places like Manhattan and the District of Columbia – but of course their competitiors will be targeting those places with missiles.

Someone shared this with me, and as it is thematic I will share it here:
Posted: Monday, Dec. 24, 2012
“The first day or so we all pointed to our countries. The third or fourth day we were pointing to our continents. By the fifth day we were aware of only one Earth.”
–Romanian cosmonaut Dumitru Prunariu in The Home Planet (Addison-Wesley Publishing, 1988)
As you read this, something unusual is happening outside your window. It may not have penetrated your consciousness yet, but it soon will. Sometime today, while you’re putting on the kettle, or doing the wash, or rewiring a lamp, the hectic rush of Christmas will begin, unnoticed, to fade.
The massed rumble of traffic will grow more remote, then melt slowly away as the streets empty. In malls and supermarkets, the tide of shoppers will dwindle and recede, until last-minute bargain hunters find themselves almost alone, like the straggling remnant of a great army that has marched over a hill and out of sight.
This strange once-a-year hush falls like snow over streets and housetops, muffling the everyday clamor, slowing the pulse of town and city, giving us a pleasant sense of detachment from the hurly-burly – as if we were actually sequestered in our cottages by a heavy snowfall. It’s a part, and no small part, of the magic of this season.
Of course, its immediate cause – the reason it’s so quiet out there – is purely economic: By Christmas Eve most people have finished whatever holiday shopping they planned to do and have sensibly gone home to stay put awhile.
Others, a goodly number, have simply left town.
But it’s more than that. What we experience as the day winds toward evening is an interior, psychological hush, as well. This tranquillity invades the mind as well as the street before your house. And it is vast, age-old and fraught with meaning, if we choose to think about it.
Small and local though it may seem, the holiday calm shares its nature with the stillness of great seas, with the drifted silence of mountain chains and the unhurried, inarticulate life of ancient trees.
Because it arrives on Christmas Eve, the hush fuses somehow with the dominant themes of the holiday: peace, brotherhood, the unity of all peoples, of all life. It becomes an appropriate context for the message of the carols: “O hush the noise, ye men of strife, And hear the angels sing.”
Astronauts of many nations have sensed this union of stillness and human solidarity as they gazed at the tiny, colorful Earth from thousands of miles away in space. American Russell Schweickart put it this way: “You’re out there going 17,000 miles an hour, ripping through space, a vacuum. And there’s not a sound. There’s a silence the depth of which you’ve never experienced before. And you look down and see the surface of that globe that you’ve lived on all this time, and you know all those people down there, and they are like you; they are you.”
Language itself encourages this equation between stillness and brotherhood. In the thesaurus, silence is a synonym – like friendliness and harmony – for peace.
Silence is also the condition in which we’re most likely to know our own hearts and experience the divine. Be still and know that I am God. Be silent all the Earth before him.
May yours be a peace-filled day, and a silent night.
This article first appeared in the Observer in 1992. Longtime Observer writer John Vaughan retired in 1999.
Read more here: charlotteobserver.com/2012/12/24/3741555/a-peace-filled-day-and-a-silent.html#storylink=cpy

Larry, your predictions sound quite reasonable, and I am pretty sure that JHK usually suggests the humanity’s adjustment to the challenging circumstances will be chaotic and even violent for a time.
I think that the only means for being brought through a huge collapse of our humming socioeconomic machine will be through an intervention, divine and miraculous. It will have to be something powerful that reaches each one as much as it can to affect major attitude changes with respect to the world as a whole and others around us. It would need to be a profound experiential understanding of the unity of all life, not receive as a line in a beautiful poem but something that blasts away at everything that opposes it. Intense suffering that touches all would naturally precede such a dispensation of Divine Grace.
On our own carting around all this collected baggage, do we really think we can just change without being stripped, disentangled, and freed from our bindings?
One vision of a new paradigm for Humanity is: When seeing someone that has less than you do, you will feel ashamed. That is just about 180 degree shift from the current order. But were it to manifest in our hearts thus, it would surely be a remedy for all that ails us.

Here are the best parts of my Christmas: my nephew is brewing beer and gave me a decent bottle of stout. My garden seed orders are almost complete and ready to be mailed in. The family garden is key to keeping my family (and especially me) healthy throughout the year…and that is what’s important to me. Looking forward to a new growing season.
The bean man

There are more than a few shadows over this Christmas time. The Newtown massacre, the planetary death by methane within a generation, the still leaking Fukushima reactors and so on.
After spending too much time trying to talk sense about WMDs to the NRA wackos I had this revelation: Great, more guns, please buy more guns!
Here’s why: Amazingly, 55% of gun deaths are suicides and another 3% are accidental. Put this together with the fact that there is a 10x higher chance that a gun in the home will be used on a family member than a stranger and we should see a certain winnowing of the herd.
Incidentally, if this information is surprising it may be partly because in 1996 our NRA-influenced Congress ordered the CDC to stop doing any analysis of gun deaths.
So on that happy note – Merry Christmas all.

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My Christmas is much smaller. My dad died recently and my mother is in an assisted living facility. My brother aunt uncles and cousins don’t talk to me thanks to my mothers narcissistic behind my back manipulations for decades. (I actually trusted her and was completely fooled) . My son and husband are my only family now and we love each other authentically. So this year we have done random acts of kindness. I bought gift cards from target and gave them to families I saw in that store who had children and looked like they needed help. My husband paid grocery bill for someone behind him on line and didn’t have enough cash. He also gave out bonuses to his employees in a factory that is dying. My son gave to a group of elderly people who were asking for help.
I can’t even begin to tell you as I watch Its A Wonderful Life tonight that everything we do counts. If the George Bailey’s in this world prevail the Potters of this world will never win. Have faith people …..then go out and do the right thing.

@being there
Ah to comment on something you’ve not completely read..
So, you think I comment on the positive aspects of Objectivism?
You’d better go read the rest of it…
You’re in for a surprise.
But, that’s typical for ideologues, they read the first two sentences and then jump in to some ideological rant.
I think, if you read it all from beginning to end, you may rethink ideology, both of them.
(once I’ve finished the series.)

Bless you my child,
But, the Potters are winning, and unfortunately for James and his world made by hand…
First it will be a world of the Company store.
The only way to beat the Potters,
is to kill them all.

To HelenHighwater
Yes,weaving has been done at least since people in ancient Egypt wrapped their dead in linen strips. The weaving loom, powered by feet pressing pedals (foot-operated levers) is not like today’s machines – which were operated by water-power before steam & modern powers came along. The blankets woven by traditional Native craftsmen in the South-West also go back to ancient times. Cloth has been woven since people stopped wearing animal skins. What the Luddites had a problem was the use of steam which could power many machines at once & put craftsmen out of business.

JHK, MERRY CHRISTMAS,the crazy world that always seems to be someplace else arrived in my area this morning, 2 volunteer firefighters were shot and killed, 2 others in critical shape in the ICU. Those of you who prep and think I will run to the hills to be safe, that wont work. It seems that every good deed gets punished in this new world of ours.

JHK wrote: “We seem disappointed that none of our policy dodges — money-printing, stimulus packages, bailouts, wars — can bring back the working-stiff paradise of 1965 in which assembly line workers made as much money as tenured college professors and a year at the State U cost $500.”
COLUMBIA, Mo. (AP) — University of Missouri junior Simone McGautha works three campus jobs and has accumulated $11,000 in student loans as she seeks to become the first in her family with a college degree. So when McGautha learned about a new campus food pantry for needy students, the 19-year-old was happy to have the help.
“I use every bit of money I have for basic needs,” the Kansas City native said. “I don’t have family putting money in my bank account. If somebody wants to help, why not?”
The student-run Tiger Pantry is among a growing number of programs at university campuses. Organizers say it’s both a response to a weak economy and a sign of the latest trend in student activism.
The pantry, which opened in early October, is within easy walking distance of the University of Missouri’s campus in Columbia. It has given free food to nearly 150 people and their families, and an additional 100 people have expressed an interest. Food recipients include nearly three dozen graduate students and a similar number of university employees, as well as a handful of professors.

You’ve got to be kidding. Exactly how do you suppose we add millions of inexperienced mini-farmers to the national equation and expect that to work? That is pure lunacy. Jim has a wetdream of returning to Little House on the Prairie, but hasn’t a clue of how we make the leap to that World Made by Hand.
Exactly how do all these mini-farmers get started Jim? Who’s going to pay for the land to farm, the equipment, and pay the bills for the other necessities in life such as shelter, heat, food, water, health insurance, clothing?
Oh, I forgot, Barack Obama has that all covered…everyone can go on welfare and latch on to the government tit while we all become World Made by Hand mini-farmers in training… sitting around the fire in our New England style homes, reading Kunstler’s books, eating tofu and sipping on fine wine waiting for the fall harvest….but thank God we won’t have to look at that interstate full of SUV’s….they’ll be turned into a sea of desperate hungry and pissed off folks with an eye on your little garden and hand made sweater.
Merry Christmas.

“there are a lot of idle people out there who can’t be supported forever by transfer payments. A lot of positions will be opening up in agriculture, but not in the way it is practiced today.”
-jhk-
Ah, James, there’s the rub – actually both of them.
One reason that I harp on incoming immigration, especially the LEGAL variety – is that it would have long ago drastically reduced itself, except for the transfer payments that enable it to keep going, in spite of all logic.
It’s time for everyone to stay home with friends and family, and make things better there – before it is altogether too late for all of us.
The world is going mad, and the United States is already at least double where it should be for sustainable population numbers, absent today’s modern “miracles.”
As far as a new type of agriculture, I think the world has to go over that cliff, first, too.
I read recently where the average dairy farmer in India has 5 cows. Here in the States a hundred cows is a small operation. So the Indian people have some redundancy and safety, that we lack – although there is talk in India of the “efficiency” to be gained by consolidation of small farms. Go figure.
My own small preparations for collapse are proceeding apace, but I realize that no matter how well I prepare that I could never live for more than a year or two without family, friends, and some sort of community. Nor, am I sure I would want to.
It’s Christmas Day, in about 5 minutes, and I’ve got big family doings to prepare for, early tomorrow and for the next couple of days.
Let me wish all my fellow CF Nation members all of the happiness, joy, and Peace that is to be found in your lives, and in the lives of those you love – on this tortured old Globe of ours.
And Happy Hanukkah, James.

All logic? That assumes the Elite want the good of America. They don’t. They want it to crash so they can take over completely.
Gerald Celente was on Alex Jones today. He agree with me that the Elite are arming Islam so it can fight against the West. Just as Whites have a longer time horizon than Blacks, the Judeo Masons have a longer time horizon than the average White or White Politician who has to cater to their whims.

On Coast 2 Coast, a year or 2 or 3 ago was
someone who writes a ‘where to go’ tip sheet.
He was saying those in the Northern Hemisphere
are doomed.
I forget his name and the name of his epublication.
He was not anyone from Taipan [as is MS].
And the epub is pricey.
I got the taipan associated ‘move to paradise’
tip sheet. It is mostly junk.
Not worth 1$ let alone 120.

How long will you and your little farm last in the face of that mob of people determined to eat anything edible. They’ll eat everything you’ve got; everything. They’ll make locusts look like pikers. You’ll be lucky if they don’t eat you.
Yes, but ‘they’ have to get there and cook the food.
Do many farmers plant pretty poisonous plants
and berry’s, kinda like a store owner w a lethal
trap for those who break in?

Good show, Jim. And great comments!
As for burtfarms above, however it happens it’s where we’re headed. With or without your (or my) permission. I doubt it’ll be much like the great left-wing plot to destroy Western Civilization that you envision, though.
As for us, business is good; our little herbal company grew nearly 500% this year, and we recently signed a contract to buy herbs from a grower an hour away instead of on the west coast. We just took over management of an adjacent 1.5 acres of soon-to-be food forest, to make our total 4. I’m in the process of clearing the nurse pines along the south edge of the property to let more sunlight in. Some sunlight that is, as one of our primary crops is mushrooms. I’m spending a mammoth amount of my energy building water harvesting contours, laying down some of that pine to help. Winter garden is coming along nicely – a variety of greens, alliums, figs, raspberries, herbs, and sunchokes, all set in the last couple of months – with 5 more 40′ terraced beds to build before spring for potatoes, broccoli, and storage onions. We’re sporing gourmet mushroom species like crazy, and planning a big addition of fruit trees, berries, and nuts in the spring.
Life in our big wall tent is testy on the coldest nights, but hey, at least it’s paid for! Stop taking on debt pretending to be something you’re not! We can’t afford it.
Oddly enough, I’m really beginning to enjoy the slow rhythm of life without electricity. Which makes sneaking away to plug in and mix it up with you fuckers for a few minutes (or hours) all the more enjoyable. “Luxury” is derived from far more common activities these days, and it might surprise you to know that luxury is now a lot more common than it used to be! Very strange. I smile a lot more now, even as I grow more concerned that Americans won’t be able to turn the ship of state in time. Maybe I’m officially nuts.
But I don’t see why most of us can’t live on an acre or two and provide a simple life of self-reliance and local trade for our modest families, with children who help out instead of spend the afternoon indoors in a Wii dance-off. Not that it’s not fun – I did it today for the first (and probably last) time, and thought it was a hoot. But there’s a ton of shit that needs to be done, and Wii dance-offs aren’t on the list.
Might as well get used to thinking about life in this way, because the other options are a whole lot worse…
Just my .02
Happy Holidays, Clusterfuckers!
Tripp

“Do many farmers plant pretty poisonous plants
and berry’s, kinda like a store owner w a lethal
trap for those who break in?”
At the risk of running off at the mouth…
Another thing we’re up to is planting a honey locust hedge, a seed every 6 inches, around our land and garden. I just happen to be planting these seeds right through a very happy poison ivy patch on the shared border with the one neighbor who doesn’t like us. Thorny little bitches, honey locust, and smothered in poison ivy?
Granted it won’t stop a tank.
But a significant portion of our crops will sprout from seemingly nothing and mature quickly, like mushrooms, or be largely invisible to the layman anyway, like sunchokes. Both fairly big parts of our diet already.
We’d be kidding ourselves to think we can get through the keyhole without some sheer dumb luck, but you know what they say about an ounce of preparation. Or is that prevention? Eh, either way it works.

My blog post this week is about gardening with the soil food web, basically the state of the art in organic methods as far as I can tell: low tech, biological, small and intensive approach, but scalable for larger holdings. Anyone who says that organic can’t match conventional in yield per acre doesn’t understand this stuff, I assure you. You can’t study and practice this kind of gardening without becoming more positive about our prospects.
It still requires that a lot more people get involved, but that seems like a given to me at this point.smallbatchgarden.blogspot.com/
Cheers.

I agree with most of what you say. It’s tough to pay for stuff from selling veggies. I live in the middle of amishville, lots of cheap veggies. I still grow lots, cuz I like to. I cant possibly feed chickens for what my neighbors get for great eggs. A nice piece of property is outrageously expensive, you never could get enough return to pay for it unless you came from money.It’s an interesting place, but one is always on the outside.
Great column JHK, always interesting. I don’t see things going quite the way you do, but it does me give me a different perspective. And lots of outside opinions too. Thanks.

I figured [rightly] that HL is a nitrogen fixer.
But they will take 10? 20? years to get tall and
thorny. Assuming those seeds can even break out
of those pods.
What about castor? To ward off disaster?

I didn’t think you called me stupid. Unfortunately, no, I don’t have any classes or talks lined up at the moment. I’m not the best public speaker. I am co-guiding several mushroom hunts next season in the mountains – looking forward to that. May have a few workshops at our place, too. Our festival season will start up again last week in February, so it looks like lots of physical labor for me for the next coupla months. Which is fine, there’s more than enough to do.
Animals, we only have enough rabbits (3 does and a buck) to keep a steady supply of meat and ready-to-use manure rolling ’round the clock. A few egg-laying hens again soon, and ultimately a few meat goats to work our agroforestry scheme. Trying to establish foraging networks for them first. Perhaps a pair of pigs eventually, when we have enough food waste. And there’s a pond down the hill for a little fish now and then, assuming the supply chains don’t break down all of a sudden and the neighborhood wipes the fish out.
Clay is a pain in the ass at first, but as you know, a thick layer of compost and mulch can work wonders on it! And I think an 1/8 of an acre is a nice garden, as long as the house isn’t taking up the whole thing. That’s what I had in Macon and we were well on our way to a dozen fruit trees, berries, egg and meat birds, goat meat and milk, and a few nice garden areas. Keep stocking rates low and systems highly integrated! And I think meat consumption will have to decline, maybe radically. Which is unfortunate; I like meat.

The best thing about honey locust is that it grows FAST! George Washington was a big proponent of honey locust fences, sensing that Americans were spending way too many man hours, and too many physical resources, building fences. A HL fence is supposed to be 12′ feet tall and nearly rat-proof in 3 years.

It’s been interesting reading the comments and hearng what people are up to. The way I see it is that it’s a good thing to cut down on the consumerism, learn to grow food wherever you find yourself, get to know the neighbors, enjoy entertainment other than the tube and stuff like that. It will be relatively few people who have the option of decamping for that isolated spot in the boonies and “living off the land” or moving to a tropical paradise. Most are not going to be able to afford to do this. and really, there is no way that the 300+ million folks in the US alone can do this, from a simple land-use standpoint.
As well, if you think that if you are holed up somewhere with your guns, ammo and food supplies, and if things went really bad somehow you and your family would be ok- well, I’ve got a bridge to sell you. I live in a rural area, and most people here are pretty cool, but some sure aren’t. If things ever got really bad, those un-cool folks who tend to have lots of guns and not much but beer in the fridge would do two things. They would set to jacking deer and anything else that moved, and they would rob their neigbhors. We already know here that if we are at work or away we stand a good chance of coming home to stripped copper plumbing, missing tools etc- and this is the normal everyday world here, fueled by drug use. If things got bad enough, I have no doubt about what would happen. And these folks would not think I was valuable in any way just because I know how to grow food and what to do with it- they would just want my food and anything else they found useful. And this is just locals- not the hordes of looting cityfolk many of you fear.
So I think that if you believe that you and yours are somehow protected by where and how you are living- well in some ways that might be. In anything short of a major collapse, so long as you have the money to pay your taxes, get health care and buy what you need, you will always be able to eat and heat your home. But if things got bad enough, you will be a victim as well, with a virtual X marked on your lovely solar powered productive homestead.
So I guess I have no illusions about this sort of life being in any way “safer”. There are good reasons to live like this, but with 7 billion folks on the planet, we can’t all live this way.
Personally, as I mentioned in an earlier post, having done the homesteading selling vegies thing for quite a while, I’m looking towards moving to an urban area and working with what they have there to create a more sustainable existence. I want to encourage urban farming, community gardening, permaculture, rainwater harvesting, walkable downtowns, local businesses and strong local economies. And that is where I’m planning to put my energies for the foreeable future. If total collapse occurs will I be a victim? Well probably yes, but I’d say that would be the case as well up here on the mountain.
So I’d urge you all to make the changes you need to make in your life to live more sustainably, but don’t necessarily think you need to live someplace rural or remote to make that happen. And put your energy into making the changes that need to happen on a systemic basis in whatever place you find yourself.

Ah, but Piper
I am not an ideologue,(though I hate global neoliberalism) but do take a look at what Alan Greenspan who was an active member of Rand’s cult did to our economy.
I understand that some of Rand’s ideas were in a strange way close to Veblen in that she liked the idea of real talent and those who understand the function of their business unlike numbers crunchers et al.
Please see: michael-hudson.com/2012/12/reality-economics/
Michael Hudson wrote a great article that’s easy to understand: Reality economics
A review of Norbert Häring and Niall Douglas, Economists and the Powerful.
This article discusses how our economy has been distorted by the basic human nature of greed and power abuses. Whereas economic theory fails to take into account that those with a log of money will be sated, he shows how this is never the case.
[By seeking to protect its gains, perpetuate itself and make its wealth hereditary, power elites lock in their position in ways that exclude and injure those below. Turning government into an oligarchy, the wealthy in debt and shift the tax burden onto the less powerful……how economics was turned into a propaganda exercise for financiers, landlords, monopolists, insiders, fraudsters and other rent-seeking predators whom classical economists sought to tax and regulate out of existence. This state of affairs reflects the century-long drive of these free lunchers to fight back against classical economics by sponsoring self-serving fictions that depict them as earning their fortunes not in predatory and extractive ways, but by contributing to output as “job creators.”]
People that claim to be Ayn Rand acolytes tend to abuse the ideas she put forth in order to claim the poor are the parasites yet as I pointed out a couple of weeks ago it is the corporations who are using threats to leave an area and shed jobs who are getting all the tax-payer goodies. The average tax payer is holding the bag for the wealthy.
He points out that a whole generation can be manipulated into believing that the economy cannot be any other way through education that ignores other ideas.
We are at a stage of financial engineering that has turned the idea of bringing goods to market to a system where debt leveraging and stocks prices are the crux that run the corporations.
…[ Concealing this short-termism with Enron-style “mark to model” accounting fictions, managers take the money and run, leaving bankrupt shells in their wake…Neoliberal doctrine demonizes government as the only power able to regulate and tax unearned income and prosecute fraud. This inverts the idea of free markets away from the classical meaning of markets free from unearned economic rent, to connote today’s arena free for predatory rentiers.]
Yup that’s why these guys keep telling you Government is bad…They want total freedom for themselves and don’t want to have to answer to anyone. That’s why you see these guys commit fraud on all levels and never go to trial.
Where we find ourselves today is in a society without laws for the top echelon. With the technology of drones that is building up according to an article I just read by Naomi Wolf, I think you get the idea of where this place is going.
You will not recognize your country.opednews.com/articles/The-coming-drone-attack-on-by-Naomi-Wolf-121222-249.html

I just want to voice strong support for Mountaingal’s point about “making the changes that need to happen on a systemic basis.” Specifically, I feel support for sidewalks, crosswalks, and safe walking paths for schoolchildren would be a great thing to do in most every community.
Reinstate the notion that people can get to their destinations on foot and bicycle, and you will plant a seed that will bear fruit in many different ways that will radically transform the way we live.

The jury is so out on the effects of climate change to our every day living it is not even funny. So what if the arctic ice is gone? Warmer weather for northern dwellers means longer growing seasons something ClusterFuckers will appreciate when they’re living in a WMBH.

I made my first 5 year effort at back-to-the-land farming in East Montpelier, Vermont from 1975 to 1980 (the Morse Farm Dairy producing licensed raw milk).
Kate and I have been farming in Gambier, Ohio since 1999 in the most recent iteration. We are primarily organic livestock or grass farmers and we started this farm with our substantial life savings. We have worked our way off the grid with solar power, our own gas well and biodiesel production (12 years to accomplish this).
We have had over 100 Kenyon College students go through our course in Sustainable Agriculture.
Students start out not even knowing a rake from a hoe and end up just a little better. However, they often get bit by the farming bug and work on farms after graduation, always for subsistence
wages. Yes, they are learning, but the path to getting their own farm is only possible with a big chunk of money from mom and dad.
There are three barriers to making a go of it in farming. First, it takes a lot of money to get a farm going – north of $100,000. Second, current prices for farm production of any kind are determined by industrial agriculture and the prices are below subsistence unless you are an accomplished grower and have specialty markets that will pay a premium (again, this takes years to accomplish). Third, the learning curve is very steep and comes in one year learning cycles, i.e., you only get to try your great idea once per crop year.
So, Howard is right, we will only get to this new agriculture through collapse of the existing system. I think this will happen in the next one to three years.

Good to hear from you again, LLB. I’m happy to see you landed in a good place. And excellent posts from Mountain Gal. It sounds like she has walked the walk, and it hasn’t been an easy, as one would expect.
Merry Christmas and Happy Hannukah to all.
–Panic in Year Zero

Jim, before you write your 2013 forecast, I recommend you read your 2012 forecast for a good laugh. Then get a good strong drink and sit down at the keyboard. Don’t you dare disappoint us long-time readers: We have grown used to your 4000 Dow Jones prediction, and expect nothing more than 4000, please. Keep up the doom and gloom. One year it will happen. After all, any empire will come to an end, and the American will not be an exception. Also, all empires and civilizations have their doomsayers, and you, Jim, make us smile every week, even in the face of this agonizingly slow decline.
So here is Ziegenmelker wishing you Merry Christmas, a Happy New Year, and a life long enough that the annual Dow 4000 prediction and “THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT” comes true, one year.

Jim, and ALL,
On this day I just finished reading “A Nation of Farmers”, which I highly recommend.
My honey and I are laying low, walking, learning to play our chosen musical devices, enjoying our delicious bounty, and ruminating upon all that you and others have shared. A lovely day indeed.
Blessings All…..

….this is too funny !!
(from ZERO HEDGE)
Submitted by Bruce Krasting on 12/25/2012 10:34
I did get an invite to a Christmas Eve dinner party. After the last few years of mishaps I thought I might get left out. This one was up in Bedford, a town where only the 2% are allowed. I was reluctant to go, as I don’t fit in so well with the “horsey” set, but the hostess said there would be several single ladies there, so I went, thinking I might get lucky.
The invite said “holiday casual”, so I went casual, Khaki pants, blue blazer, striped shirt, no tie. What a mistake that was. It seems that holiday casual actually means that you dress up wearing silly outfits; so even though most of the guests looked like idiots, it was me who stuck out like a sore thumb.
The place was a sea of guys wearing red and green sport coats. Every man had a tie with a snowman, Christmas tree or a wreath (no Menorah ties at this party). Then there were the pants; how can anyone wear red pants and a green jacket these days?
The women all looked great. The usual pearls, diamond rings, colorful outfits (some with fur trimming?), $1,000 shoes, $300 hair-dos, etc. I thought it was amusing that half of the girls were wearing silly Santa caps as part of their garb.
One nice lady was dressed as an Elf; all green, silly shoes and hat, a black belt. Thinking maybe this was one of the singles, I tried some small talk, saying, “That’s quite the outfit you’re wearing”. Her, happy I’ve noticed, “I had it made special for this party”.
I’m thinking how crazy that is; but look a little closer, and see that this costume is very well made; hand stitched, tailored just right, nothing cheap about it. I come back with a surprised, “You’re kidding?” Her not smiling, and saying something about needing more Egg Nog, and she’s gone.
I got myself a drink from the punch bowl, (Cosmopolitan, made with Tito vodka, of course), went into the den where there was a fire burning and the guys were drinking brown liquor from cut glasses, no ice, thank you. One guy smiling at my pink drink, probably thinking I’m gay.
The small talk was of the usual stuff, vacations, horses, promotions, vacation houses someplace nice. There was some back and forth on the more pressing issues; the cliff, the economy, taxes and, of course, guns.
To the extent that this group represents the thinking of the top 2% (I think it does), then Boehner should have been there listening. What I heard was a complete acceptance to the idea that taxes on income and capital would be higher next year. One guy said, “They should just get it done already”.
Later, I wondered about this seeming inconsistency. I doubt that there was single person at the party who is now paying the top rate of 35%. If tax rates go up in 2013 to 39%, they won’t pay that rate either. It’s far too easy to move income around so that it doesn’t get taxed at the maximum rate. (Ask Mitt Romney – he pays only 11%.)
There was one loud gripe, the new 3.8% Obamacare tax on investment income. This crowd will, in the end, get hit harder with this tax then they will with the increase in tax brackets. That’s probably worth noting, whatever popularity Obamacare may have had with upper income Americans, it’s going down next year when the new tax starts hitting.
Bedford’s thirty odd miles from Newtown, so that topic had to come up. I thought it was interesting that there was a clear consensus for harsh new gun control laws, but at the same time, I knew that damn near all these folks had a loaded 9mm back at the house; just in case…
There were no NRA supporters at this bash, but they liked the idea of a cop at the local schools, and agreed that the only thing that was going to stop a bad guy with a gun; was a good guy with a gun. Listening to this group, I wouldn’t be surprised if guards with guns start popping up at some tony private schools.
For dinner I got seated between two well decked out ladies, the one to my left was a knockout. Maybe 40, but tight, red dress, dark hair, black high heels and nice legs. I asked her how she managed to stay so fit, her saying she rode horses and did Pilates. I was embarrassed to ask what the pilates thing was about; what ever it is, it was working for her. I got the sense she was upset about something, her knocking back red wine like it was water.
She was sitting next to a guy wearing a dark green jacket, red vest and tie with reindeers. He had about 20 years on her; the word “trophy” did come to mind. Anyway, towards the end of the meal she excuses herself, comes back five minutes later. Mr. Green Jacket made a big deal of her return, gets up and helps her with the stiff-backed chair. But he muffed it.
I happened to notice that the damn chair was still not where it should be, and watched as she grabbed the sides to cinch it into place. Greenie still had his hand on the back of the chair, so it tilted back just a bit.
Sure enough, as her backside hit the back of the chair, it tipped a bit more. Gravity took hold, and ass over teakettle she went. It probably only took a half-second for her to go down all the way, I saw it happening in slow motion.
Green Jacket tried to save the day with a last minute catch, but he flubbed, and ended up just hitting her in the head as she went akimbo. As the chair went down, her legs went up, and her left foot whacked the bottom of the table about as hard as a four-inch heeled stiletto in a size six foot could hit.
It was like a gunshot. At least half dozen long-stem goblets ended sideways, silverware flying. For a second or two, not a sound. I’m on my feet ready to help, but Green Jacket is already lending a hand. As she gets up, she gets close to Greenie and whispers in a voice that only the three of us heard, “You fucking asshole”.
I have a sick sense of humor, so that line got a quick chuckle from me. The lady sitting on the other side of me (why do some ladies tint grey hair blue?) snapped, “There’s nothing funny about it!” I looked at her, “You don’t know the half of it”. Red Dress was rubbing her foot, looked at me, and sort of smiled.
It was snowing when I left; on the slow ride home Green Jacket and Red Dress came to mind. I was thinking that Green Jacket was not going to get lucky before the New Year, and I was going to look into that pilates thing.

I’ve actually been thinking about growing a variety of bamboos for various purposes (not the least of which would be privacy) around the food forest and for sale. I would think the big timber bamboos would be particularly valuable in post-industrial systems. I’ve got a 50′ variety with 4″ culms, and another 25′ variety with shiny black culms, (though both are still pretty small at this point), and I intend to add at least half a dozen more useful varieties next spring. We have decades of industrial salvage ahead of us still, but items like gutters may run short faster, and/or become quite pricey, especially as moving water around all the new small food production systems passively becomes the norm. Giant bamboos could fill that gap quite nicely I think. And of course we’re shooting for as diverse an income network as possible.
Bamboo and mushrooms strike me as a good pairing in our production system where we want that sort of density and shade. And bamboo is only the most useful plant on Earth, right? 1500+ current commercial uses at last tally I believe?

American Empire is in decline and naturally that will produce anxiety. But its happened to everybody else. America is just the “last man standing” in the modern world. We are used to pushing people around, and now we can’t and our response is to cry like babies.
Another thought…there is no such thing as absolute self sufficiency. Only degrees.
If you plan an island homestead and think this will save you, you are no different than the Randian businessmen you so despise.
The future, for now, lies somewhere in between.
Personally all I’ve done so far is to give up a career as a regular physician (I do part time and odd jobs), stop buying and doing things I have no interest in, and put my savings into precious metals. There are consequences to this; if you don’t “participate” then you inevitably lose family and friends and career opportunities. But I don’t care because I’m much more secure in my knowledge of what’s ahead. There’s simply no way I’m going back to being a full time physician. It’s a trap.
I plan to get into agriculture but it’s difficult to start, because I have skills or knowledge in that area. But it’s getting to the point where I need to make a decision and soon.

…..and now, having just finished a meal of friend-raised turkey, our red brussels sprouts and leeks. So damn good, omg. And now pumpkin custard, phew! I had no idea how wondrous leeks were until this season. I’ve loved every minute of them, from starting the seeds indoors, to the transplanting outside, to the marvelling at their growth. We’ve eaten them everyday for months on end, and are saddened to only have a few left. Leeks, I love you!
We don’t grow most of our food because we think that we’ll tough it out while our neighbors starve and then come after us, we do it because we want to. We want the best that we can accomplish. We don’t want industrial crap. Many of you are right, “they” might come and steal from us or kill us. And…..we might get to know many of “then”, and enjoy real lives with each other.
But I am here now, this is right livelihood now. Just because things can perhaps get shitty doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t do these things now.
I for one don’t fully know why people exist, or why I am here. But I know that this moment is precious. And that living in the simplest way I can, right now, is what I can do. And yes, the larger world continues, I tap into it too. But this doesn’t negate the efforts that can be made, simply, right now.
It seems to me that I am here to learn all I can, and to share with those nearby. Death will come soon enough to fret about it now.

Nope, Buck’s still a Stud; there are only a handful of people left on the planet capable of doing what I do “by hand”.
Beyond that, who’s going to give me any shit if not myself? Yeah, ‘men sharpen men’ and all that, but if you’re going to try and sharpen Buck Stud you better at least have a Hard Arkansas, instead of a some flimsy one-liner.

The take away I get from your posts is how hard it all is – especially for a single person. But you did it anyway – congratulations. But you are tired and perhaps feeling isolated and/or bored. So you want out or back in rather. But you should realize that you would be moving back into greater danger. In areas like yours, the good folks all have guns too. And when things go south, they will start shooting the riff raff with little hesitation.
In the Cities, it’s a far different story. Now let’s talk Race: you sound like a Liberal. Fact: Blacks and Hispanics are FAR more dangerous than poor Whites – especially for Whites. I’ve lived with both and I know. The neighborhood where I live now is full of poor Whites. I wouldn’t even be able to live safely in a similar Black neighborhood. Hispanics are in between Whites and Blacks, but more towards Blacks.
Instead of moving back, why don’t you advertise for apprentices? That would be true service to those stuck in the Cities – and a way to ease your load.

Ethiopian criminal declared himself a victim of racism in the United States, gains asylum in Sweden, and committs atrocious rape and murder of Swedish woman. Extremely disturbing image – don’t read unless you want to know the truth.
Yogis, both Hindu and Buddhist, meditate on corpses. Why? Because they’re real and it’s going to happen to them.wvwnews.net/content/index.php?/news_story/who_was_ellen_krantz.html

Hi Jim,
Each year I travel from my nest (paid for house and acreage)in western Washington to the metroplex (Dallas-Ft. Worth) to be with family at Christmas. Each year I think it will be the last. I’m living a long way from “home”, in my 60s now and never had kids. I’d love to move back to Texas to be near my (very unaware, “I don’t want to hear it”)sisters but with the fracking going on in Texas and the drought I just can’t see that in my future. So I continue to try and build a family and community “back home” in the Pacific Northwest. I suspect there’s many of us facing similar circumstances. I think we should enjoy what we can now, as we can, while still keeping an eye on that most challenging future.
Blessings to all

JHK,
Regular reader enjoying Dec 25 in a lovely backwards community on the big island of hawaii.
New home space of about 30 acres, same price as a condo in LA – near a freeway.
Lived in the most expensive beach community in California for 20 years and have more here…and less…rich people for one.
Live by one principle, nothing simple ever happens when you spend money on any but the most basic human needs.
Long ago left the grid, now make analogue recordings here for my pleasure.
Land is cheap, couple of acres hydroponic project, could not agree more with your thesis.
Keep up the good work, but human nature, as defined in any balance, does not give me much hope for a rapid adjustment to what might occur.
G

In the USA and elsewhere, those who protect
their shops and homes with bobby traps sometimes
get jailed for murder.
Those who plant poison mushrooms at their farms
entrances may get the same.
Since you like gore so much [no, not Al] you might
enjoy ‘Operation Swordfish’. A book about
narco terror, from Columbia to USA.
The Dons punishment for the killers…..
tie em to trees in the jungle and let jaguars
eat them alive. Then he had photos taken of the remains. He who has the gold makes the rules.

We live in an old factory in a mill town in New England. Our hand made Christmas consisted of a post-nap repast of tomato soup with grilled cheese. It’s not homesteading but it’s a start.
Tomato soup by hand
1 jar canned tomatoes
1 quart lamb broth
1 small potato, peeled and cubed
2 skinny carrots, peeled and sliced
Cook down tomatoes in lamb broth (made by me 2 months ago from lamb weaned and reared 32 miles away on a farm) with potato (from farm 11 miles away) and carrots (same farm) for about 30 minutes. Toss in some dried sage (grown by me at community garden) and add salt and pepper (from store). Process soup in a food mill and re-heat adding a bit of butter (Cabot from Vermont) if desired.
Serve with a grilled cheese sandwich. As a special holiday treat, we had rice and cranberry bread (made by Buddhist baker next town over) with cheddar (store) and a little bit of smoked chicken, (smoked by people around 20 miles away) sage leaves fried in butter and onion for our grilled cheese. Oh, and we split a chocolate (made locally, cocoa not sure where from, but far away) for desert. I hate to think of the mortgage default swaps that may or may not have played a part in some of the ingredients of our post-nap repast. I know the tomatoes are mine because I grew them myself but the seeds are from Ace Hardware and I hear they’re in bed with Saudi’s. What’s a factory girl to do?

We don’t celebrate Christmas. All the commercialism has spoiled whatever religious significance the holiday once had. The house is being heated by wood harvested last spring from our 47 acre wood lot, more than enough land for the trees to grow back faster than we cut them, in fact, for the most part we use trees that have blown down in storms the past year. We only had tomatoes broccoli and asparagus this year out of the garden, and not enough to be 100% independent of the grocery store, but I’m working on it. I still want to raise chickens, their droppings will help with the soil fertility and they will get rid of ticks as well.

The MultiCult has many unintended con-sequences.
In Asia there are edible srooms.
In California there are deadly [attack the liver I think] look alikes.
I recall a few years back hearing about the Immigrants that died.
They moved here and picked the wrong mushrooms.
Very recently at a ‘senior live in facility’ in
Sacramento [?] a few folks died….again from
a worker there who gathered mushrooms for the
pasta.
Far as growing them in hopes poachers eat them and die, I never heard of it.
But I liken it to a shopkeeper who booby traps his store. One day he finds a burglar dead
in the trap. Such folks get in BIG trouble.
And it happens.
I did hear from a pot head friend that he once had a pot grower friend who ‘bragged of killing poachers, 8? of them over the years’!!!!!!!!!!

I’m just trying to get by like so many other people, I’m a prepper, and I’ve been at it for 5 years. I’m so glad I started prepping, what a load off of my mind knowing I’m able to feed my family. I’ve noticed this sad little Cold War between our two main ideologies is heating up, guess It was always going come down to an us or them moment, with all the years of both sides dehumanizing each other it should be easy for liberal scumbags and conservative teabagger redneck fucks to think less enough of one another to kill each other. One will now try to disarm the other, nothing good will come of that. This will come to violent climax probably sooner than later, I’m not a big fan of guns, but I’m a veteran and I own them, a human being has a right to defend his or her life and family that’s a natural right as far as I can tell. Merry Christmas Jim, hope your next novel comes out soon, I’m looking forward to it.

According to wikipedia the loom has referred to a machine that helps weave thread into cloth since 1404.
There is a whole section on simple machines that involved the Greek thinkers.
This is the kind of machinary that will endure as long as people are willing to work with their hands ASWELLAS engage their brain. The kind of work our internet forum has failed to encourage.

I enjoyed the article Ront – thanks for that. But the serene realization of Christmas Eve also struck me as something that was once more possible on a daily basis when urban population centers were not so congested,large,and violent. Which sort of brings us full circle to Prog’s obsession with over-population and by extension, quality of life/violence. And let’s face it, criminal violence has a way of sharply delineating itself, no matter how universal or distanced in perspective we may wish to be from the safe promentory of a utopian vantage point. From space it may look as if all people are one, or even more deceptively, with no people at all; but down here in the trenches of everyday life, that is simply not the case. And that truth is amplified with increasing population numbers. So in many ways that article read like a Thomas Kincaid platidudinal painting, with Hansel and Gretel eating gingerbread by firelight inside the cozy cottage next to a placid stream. In other words, a fantasy offering nothing substantial or sustainable. But a fantasy that seems to be yearning for less people, nonethless.

For some reason, your post reminded me of something a friend of mine said when I was going to university. This guy was Indian, though he’d at that time never been to India. He had a PhD in theoretical physics, but was generally a partier and guitar player and womanizer, as well. Anyway, we were discussing population density. He asked me if I’d ever seen a couple rats in, say, a ten gallon aquarium-type glass container. Then he contrasted that to many, say 15 rats in the same-sized container. The rats with the higher population density are more jittery, more spastic, tend to have more issues with the other rats when they’re crammed right on top of each other. Same with humans, he said. I think there’s something to it.
“Despite all my rage, I am still just a rat in a cage.” Billy Corgan

Ront is stuck in nice and can’t deal. Kinkaid is to painting what McKuen is to poetry what Ront is to spirituality. Indeed his fairy tales are all nice and therefore meaningless: Hansel and Gretel without the Witch.
You are filled with hatred that you don’t acknowledge nor understand. But because you are, I can relate to you – the difference is that I understand my own hatred.

It’s been studied in the laboratroy. Their whole rate society changes. Pair bonds break down and alpha males acquire harems. Their are gangs of rats, assualts on other male rats and rapes of female rats. More peaceful rats spend most of their time hiding and only come out when the gangs are asleep. It’s all amazingly like our ghettoes.

Call me un-American, but I left the US 17-years ago and never looked back. I miss Hawaii dearly, but once your shelf-life is over, the US is undoable unless you want to live in a community with burglar-bars on the windows.
My wife and I now live in Asia. No gangs; no freeway shootings, no school massacres; no graffiti.
My best wishes to my American compatriots, but if you people don’t wake up soon, the ship of state is going to sink – or go fascist.
I’ll place my bet on the latter.

Don’t think its just the availability of firearms that’s responsible for the violence plaguing the US during this Christmas season. No, last night a bunch of people in Hartford were stabbed, including children, and Arson fires erupted Bridgeport, with charred bodies found inside the burnt out houses.
Is there a relationship between violence and the condition of the physical places where we live?
Formerly stable, prosperous Connecticut seems to be devolving into a lunatic asylum where murder is the order of the day. The main characteristic here is the automobile speeding down the interstates which slice thru this little state in all directions. In fact the on;y attractive areas left are where interstates were not built, namely the NW corner. I was reading an account of a British Army Officer who took a walking tour of New England in 1760. He describes the Post Road between Hartford and Farmington, about 10 miles, as ‘One long English Garden’, and he passed only one lone traveller on horseback on his journey. Now that same trip is a brutal, concrete 12 lane limited access highway, where flaming, road closing wrecks are frequent occurrences, and bodies are picked up off the pavement.
–Panic in Year Zero

I did look into getting an apprentice a while back; it was before the economic downturn and they were hard to come by and it was pretty competitive here to actually get one. And, knowing nothing of use, they still expected room & board, pay and a high speed internet connection. It might well be different now- but I don’t want to farm full-time anymore in the middle of nowhere. I want to live someplace where I can actually walk to a store or other destination and doing so would not require a day-hike!
As for being safer here- well perhaps that is so. But I’m not sure my purpose in life is to just be personally safe. I believe I have more to contribute to others than just my personal safety. I also think that it is the fear of “them”, being blacks and hispanics mostly, among whites, that has led in a big way to the abandonment of urban areas and the formation of suburbia.If we want to make meaningful progress in turning the whole unwalkable suburban thing around, we need to reinhabit our central cities. and that means not just certain pricey gentrified areas such as most of Manhattan or Back Bay in MA or San Francisco, but also Detroit and Cleveland and Toldedo and Philadelphia and so on. So we need to make these places good places to live, work and raise families, and we need to find a way to do this together.
There are places today such as Toronto, which are quite multi-cultural and work really well. I don’t see why this can’t be the case in the US too. And I grew up in a city and have lived in them until I moved out to my farm, so it’s not as if I just have some naive liberal notion of what the real world is like. I do know this. I just think that I can accomplish more than just being one more organic farmer in an area inundated with them, vying for the all too slim customer base in these parts.

Has anyone else seen the stories on CNBC today stating US oil production will exceed SArabia by 2017, US will be energy independent in 2035, and for 2013 supply will exceed demand by a large amount? Maybe Armageddon will have to be postponed to beyond our lifetimes.
–Panic in Year Zero

Henry, yes, I too have seen all the stories about how we, the US, are loaded with energy underground. Mainly natural gas. It is really hard to believe that all these stories are part of a massive propaganda campaign. That said, it is still very possible that it is just propaganda. For one thing, look at the stakes involved. Our whole country is built on retail commerce and the automobile. A lot of wealthy people have a lot to lose if this economic model comes crashing down. It is not hard to imagine that they will want to keep the status quo going for just a little bit longer, even if its long term prospects are dim. As for the quality of the propaganda, we all find it hard to believe the both the existence and the effectiveness of the “big lie.” Nonetheless, why do you think the major corporations fund psychological studies? Not for the benefit of mankind, I assure you. Vested interests know just what buttons to press to effect the intended response. We are really very simple creatures in that regard. It’s only listening to that “inner voice” that might save us from being inspired by propaganda to ignore the obvious and do the very things which are disadvantageous to ourselves.
So JHK tells us of one future and the mainstream press tells us another. In which future should you believe? That is the question that lingers in most of our minds. The answer to that is straightforward. Which is, verify that which you can. The mainstream press says that we are sitting on an ocean of energy here in the US. Can I verify that? No. JHK says that our infrastructure is crumbling and our living arrangement is is appallingly dismal. Can I verify that? Yes, to a large extent. Take a drive into the country and look at the towns. Mostly dismal. Look at the cities, for the most part. Dismal. Look at the state of most “family units”. Dismal. Look at the health of the populace in general. Dismal. Look at the job prospects of so many people? Dismal. Look at the use of legal mind-altering drugs. Excessive.
Now choose whom to believe.

Ya Al K., this place does look pretty bad.
And the corporate media are a bunch of lying dirtbags, I’ll give you that.
My question is, tho, what’s going to prevent us from going into the future as we are right now, wounded and limping, everything getting progressively worse and worse by degrees, for years, decades or even centuries to come? There have always been winners and losers, except now there are more losers than ever before. But the winners are living fabulous lives, and they are well protected by an army of local, state and federal police. Take the Beverly Hills, Hollywood Showbiz Scum, for example.
–Panic in Year Zero

JHK,on the day the New Agers (who misunderstood the idea of a Maya calendar) predicted the End Times, we spent our first full day on a rural property of 11 acres. We’ll start farming next year in a small way, and we know the locals already. Not quite a World Made by Hand, but a start in an established community of rural folk who have not forgotten all of the old ways.
Happy New Year, CF Nation pundits!

The world is at war today.
It has engulfed all departments of life — political,
economic, social and religious.
The instinct of self-preservation enhanced by fear and
uncertainty of the future is aggressively active in the
guise of various pseudonyms and catch-words.
Exclusiveness is parading as nationalism; self-interest is
known as economics; fanaticism is synonymous with religion;
libertinism is looked upon as social, and moral freedom; and
exploitation is termed politics.
This instinct of self-preservation is legitimate and natural
among the orders of life which are lower in the scale of
evolution. But when it expresses itself through man it makes
of him nothing more than a talking animal, and as such he is
still a long way from deserving the title, “the best of
creation.”
Is it anybody’s fault if one finds oneself on the right side
of things or the wrong side of things? No! Every human being
has come to serve and achieve a definite purpose, and by
playing his part to perfection he automatically works out
his own salvation.
There is this difference, however. In the divine scheme of
things, when individuals or people are about to lapse into
bestiality, instead of progressing higher and onward, it is
suffering that rehabilitates them.
Spiritual Masters achieve this same resurrection for
humanity much more easily and less painfully not only by
preaching, but by translating into fulfilment those familiar
words “self-denial” and “brotherhood of man”, whose very
beginning and whose ultimate end is LOVE…
Originally MESSAGES OF MEHER BABA, Adi K. Irani, pp. 9-10
MEHER BABA ON WAR, pp. 34-35

I’m reminded of the PBS series, “Frontier House”, where none of the modern participant families would have survived the first winter, 1870s style – hadn’t secured enough food, hadn’t chopped enough wood. We underestimate what’s really required to make a life off-the-grid, off the getting & having consumer culture matrix.

“My question is, tho, what’s going to prevent us from going into the future as we are right now, wounded and limping, everything getting progressively worse and worse by degrees, for years, decades or even centuries to come? There have always been winners and losers, except now there are more losers than ever before.”
What would change it all is to understand deeply what is the REAL goal and prize. Amassing stuff, worldly power, fame and fortune is the delusional, conventionally-accepted goal and prize. If there is any contentment, happiness, or peace that results from the pursuit of these illusions it is short-lived. An adjustment (180 degrees) toward embracing lasting values will be a potent remedy to all problems we face and will face.

I thought these two letters to the Editor (SF Chronicle) were worthy of sharing on this forum:
Pursuit of happiness
In the discussion of gun violence, we have missed a vital clue. This is not a happy culture. A recent article listed the happiest countries, we were not among them. We foster competition. Nothing is ever enough. More attention needs to be put into building happiness skills.
Janice Hutchinson, Berkeley
Quiz of the day
Q. What do you call an armed guard in a school?
A. The first target.
What an unbelievably stupid recommendation by the NRA.
Larry Templeton, Los Altos
A Bold, Calm, and Cheerful New Year to one and all!

Another white male kills firefighters.
That´s 44 out of 62 massacres carried out by white males.
Police recovered a military-style .223-caliber semiautomatic Bushmaster rifle with flash suppression, the same make and caliber weapon used by a white male in the elementary school massacre in Newtown, Conn., that killed 26, including 20 young children.
Gotta be a special place in hell for someone who burns houses, plans an ambush, and then kills the first responders.

Well people vote with their feet, MG – both White Liberals and Conservatives fled from places like Detroit. They weren’t just imagining the level of Black violence. White Women often have immense trouble with this whole area. They let their idealism get in the way of common sense. They do things that get themselves raped or killed like walking around Black areas late at night or getting on elevators with dangerous looking young Black males – just so they don’t feel or appear to be “racists”.
And again by respecting all Blacks and Hispanics like this, you are disrespecting vast numbers of Whites who voted with their feet. This is very common of course, but that doesn’t make it any less wrong and just plain strange. I mean after all, you wont find Blacks and Hispanics talking down their own people like this. You just wont. So if you admire non Whites and want to become like them – stop being against your own people.
Anyway, you are voting with your feet too. Sad to leave what you have built, but the need to be with other people is overwhelming. I have heard about the great work being done in Detroit, and it is exciting. I just don’t think it will work or be safe long term.

Many things seem to work well for awhile and then begin to collapse. Things like fiat currency loaned into existence. Or chemical fertilizers and the whole green revolution. Indian farmers now drink the stuff to kill themselves. Toronto now has a number of thriving ethnic communities, complete with gangs and a high crime rate. Whites who can will cluster in pricey, well patrolled central areas and poor Whites will flee. All this is an old story, MG. Canada will be no different.
Vancover will be different because it’s Chinese who are taking over. Much less violent, they will just push Whites out by Cultural Alienation. Personally, I prefer this approach to being shot or stabbed.

A Simple Christmas was knitting a Mitten Tree for all the kids and grand kids. We played the piano and sat by the fire laughing and telling the same old stories that we tell every year. It was wonderful. I try to live as though the world made by hand was already here because I want the younger ones to have hope when it does arrive.

Yes that is so true. Black and Hispanics are FAR more dangerous than Whites. I live in an area that is Increasingly more and more populated with Gangs, latino.
I figure wtshtf That is My biggest Threat.
Population Whites : 75% Latinos 25%.
I say that because of the gangs & latinos, I should move and prefer to live where it is mostly White, because I am. I would be safer there By Far. and that Whites’ don’t have the gangster mentality the others have.
If not for those problems, I live in a Paradise.
But for those problems I want to move.
Feel I better do it soon, just a feeling, but I as onto this a long time ago.
I enjoy your posts.
I am not regular on here anymore, but have been longtime here.
One other thing I have noticed lately is that if you are going to walk places, you had better be paying real good attention because the drivers ae not, as a rule.
And if you are driving watch out for folks who basically walk run right out in front of you in crosswalks, then glare at you for some reason.
We should all be paying attention anyway, kind of a no brainer. It’s scary how many people aren’t.

I don’t think I am that naive. I grew up in NYC and have lived in a number of urban areas. I don’t really have a lot of “white guilt” at play here. I am cautious in places where I need to be but don’t fear people just based on their skin color.
It does seem clear to me however that if we are serious about trying to get away from car dominated lives, the obvious places to live, work and play are going to be cities, and we can’t all live in the areas that are already gentrified. We already have quite a few cities that have some level of infrastructure, buildings that could be restored, near train lines, rivers, etc. Many of these have indeed become struggling ghettos. And yes, I do believe that to make this work many of the white people that fled the cities will need to return and help rebuild them.
I don’t know if Detroit is in my future but I do know that there are quite a few young farmers working to create urban agriculture in the city. This is also the case in other cities such as Cleveland. And there may indeed be occasional issues in Toronto but overall it is a thriving and prosperous multi-cultural city. I’d live there if they’d let me!

For a couple of years I advised a teacher and her class on a research project at Sidwell. I had been on NPR and they tracked me down. The idea was to make a connection with someone at a University who could coach them. The teacher made them send little thank you cards. It was kind of cute. It was hard to say no. Could you imagine pissing off all of the parents in that class!

There are a lot of deficit hawk hypocrites on CFN. They were silent from 2000 to 2008, when Cheney said “Deficits don’t matter,” then became very concerned about debt and deficit spending as soon as Obama took office (Obama was handed 11% unemployment, and he has brought it down to 7+%)
The deficit hawks say they are very concerned about printing fiat money and scream that will lead to inflation. They scream it year after year… and they are wrong year after year. It’s bad for business they say. Interest rates on U.S. government debt are at historic lows, indicating that investors aren’t worried about America’s ability to pay off its debt. Low interest rates prove investors aren’t concerned about America’s debt.
Republicans’ resistance to tax increases is actually an indication that they aren’t as concerned about deficit reduction as they seem. Instead, their actual goal is to reduce the size of government. Republicans will fail at that, too. Just as they failed at blocking Obama’s re-election. They really don’t matter anymore. They are just lobbyists for millionaires and do not have popular support anymore.
Meanwhile, the economic recovery continues with positive indicators from all parts of the housing industry, including rising house values between Oct. 2011 and Oct. 2012. All indicators are that we are in a sustained economic recovery. Things are getting better, not worse, contrary to CFN conventional wisdom.

There are different kinds of Quakers. The Hicksite branch are the strong pacifists who would NEVER have armed guards at a school. The other branch, the one non-pacifist Richard Nixon belonged to, must be the same as the Sidwell school.
Meanwhile, police officers continue to be killed. When unarmed people are killed, the suggestion is to arm them. Nobody is noticing that arming and training police has proved ineffective. No one seems to notice that arming police did not prevent them from being killed. There is a magical belief about being armed and trained in the use of firearms, when, in reality, there is no guarantee that being armed will save your life. You just feel safer.
Meanwhile, guns increase the chances of accidents, and guns also routinely kill folks in crossfires, or “stray bullets,” including babies sleeping in their cribs. I congratulate folks like Dee, and Welles, and Zaxxon for emigrating out of the USA. The combination of lack of mental health services and a superabundance of firearms makes “accidents” and massacres far too frequent. Those who have left have made sane statements. Life is better in many many other parts of the world.
Where I live now people actually say good morning to everyone when boarding a bus. And the amazing thing is, there is a chorus of “good morning” responses to the person boarding the bus. When they get off the bus, they thank the bus driver. In other words, things are more civilized here than I ever experienced in the USA on public transit. Of course, most use their private cars and many use their cars aggressively and express road rage.
Asoka dot dot, now in my South American mud hut.

Purchases of new houses probably rose to the highest level in more than two years and the value of existing properties increased, confirming the real-estate market is now a bright spot in the U.S. expansion, economists said before reports this week.
New-home sales climbed to a 380,000 annual rate in November, the most since April 2010, according to the median forecast of 60 economists surveyed by Bloomberg before Dec. 27 figures from the Commerce Department. House prices in 20 cities rose 4 percent in the 12 months ended October, the best year- over-year performance since June 2010, other figures may show.
Enlarge image
“We’re going to see large gains in virtually all of the housing measures next year,” said Mark Vitner, a senior economist at Wells Fargo Securities LLC in Charlotte, North Carolina, a subsidiary of the largest mortgage lender in the U.S. “Job growth and the steady decline in the unemployment rate means that more and more workers feel confident about their own economic prospects and they’re willing to move forward with major commitments like buying a home and buying an automobile.”

Hey Dave, congrats on your success. My wife grew up in the city and her parents dragged her back into the country. She hated living in the “Sticks”. I would move up country in a minute ( I grew up in the “city”) but I would have to leave her “behind”. What’s a dude to do after 30 years with the same great girl. I live in a semi-suburban area so not too bad. I would like some decent acreage away from the suburbs, but we are black and white on the issue. Lalalalala.

See my post of DECEMBER 26, 2012 6:14 PM
Things are getting better, not worse, anti soak.
This must be distressing to CFNers who want doom, but facts is facts … what to do?
Oh, yes, you can ignore the facts, or question the source of the facts, or invent your own falsehoods and promote them as facts.
But normal sane evidence-based people, using evidence from both government and market sources, know that we are in an economic recovery, something JHK and CFNers like “slow money XXX5” have denied vociferously for three years now in the face of facts to the contrary.
Oh, yeah, maybe next Tuesday the Euro will collapse. You guys have been predicting that in all caps “WE ARE IN CRUNCH TIME” since 2010.

What’s the old joke about the state lottery? The state lottery is a tax for people who can’t do math.
I guess that the same thing could be said about Christmas? Christmas is a tax on consumers. Christmas is a tax for people who think that they’re celebrating the birth of The Baby Jesus.
I guess that inflation is tax on consumers to bump perceived profits when actual profits are collapsing?
Dumb F…cks! No wonder some people go ape shit and start going beserk….

Hi Jackie. Welcome back. Maybe you could hook up with SJ when she makes a run for Mormon Territory.
But you like the beach. Most of the Paradises down in Central and South America are already dangerous and will become more so. Costa Rica may still be alright but it is getting worse. Also they don’t encourage Americans to come as much as they used to. Uruguay is very White, has a good economy last I heard, and has some very nice beaches. Argentinians go there to vacation. It was settled by people from all over Europe so its culture isn’t all that Latin, though they speak Spanish of course. That’s a plus for Americans or any other newcomer from Europe.

What’s going to prevent us from going into the future as we are right now, wounded and limping, everything getting progressively worse and worse by degrees, for years, decades or even centuries to come?
Feedback loops and exponential growth prevents any possibility of protracted collapse, the math prevents it.

You wouldn’t fit in, Radu. Uruguay is too liberal for you. Uruguay was the first Latin American country to legalize civil divorce (and the divorce rate is half the USA). Uruguay was the first Latin American country to allow same-sex couples to adopt children. Given your attitude toward women, you wouldn’t be happy in Uruguay because it has a higher percentage of females than males

Corn pone dictator prediction which JHK has pushed over the years is another failed prediction.
What the liberal USA just did was re-elect the most liberal (non-white) USA Senator (more liberal than Ted Kennedy) for a second time!
All the candidates for corn pone dictator have been defeated, including ex-CIA chief Petraeus (betray-us and betrayed his wife, too) who is out on his ass.
The guy who threw is war medals back at the White House and testified at Winter Soldier hearings about USA war crimes is now set to become Secretary of Defense!
There is no corn pone dictator in our future. The liberals are firmly in control. Many CFNers are squirming and predicting disaster (or, like barfy barf who predicted a “landslide” Romney victory), but the facts are not cooperating with you.
The facts are cooperating with Asoka.
The first 40+ USA presidents were WASPs. There will NEVER be an old white Protestant Christian male. Future presidents will be women, non-white, atheist, or young … but you won’t be seeing your kind elected president again.
Demographics are changing. The new South will be solidly Democratic and pro-abortion, pro-feminist, pro-union, pro-immigration (sorry, P4C!). In the future you won’t recognize Alabama, Georgia, Texas, etc. Whites will be a distinct minority, but will have no electoral power.
The run of old white men as President is over … permanently.

When He opened the third seal, I heard the third living creature say, ‘Come and see.’ So I looked, and behold, a black horse, and he who sat on it had a pair of scales in his hand. And I heard a voice in the midst of the four living creatures saying, ‘A quart of wheat for a denarius, and three quarts of barley for a denarius; and do not harm the oil and the wine.’

The quart of wheat means you can feed yourself but if you feed your family you all eat poorly, that’s where the three quarts of barley come in. No harm to the oil and wine means that a small number continues to live in luxury. Their flesh lives while their souls die.
We are living poetry now, tornadoes never used to happen in winter.

Pucker, I truly feel sorry for you because your country is changing and you are not changing with it, so you feel alienated. Your choice if you want to remain a bitter critic instead of accepting the new reality. See my post of DECEMBER 26, 2012 7:07 PM

Obama is engaged. Obama cares. Obama cut his holiday break short, and is set to arrive back in Washington on Thursday to press for a fiscal gentle slope deal.
GOP leaders have not called members back to Washington, D.C. The Republicans don’t seem overly concerned about the fiscal gentle slope, even though tax increases and government spending cuts are set to begin next week.
Nobody is “running things” … we have a government that is paralyzed because the Republican party has openly defied the President. The Republicans have committed treason.
“Yessuh” would result in bipartisan compromise. Instead of “Yessuh” the Republicans were saying “Hell no!” these last four years.
Have you been paying attention?

It’s the same crowd running things
==========
Or is this your conspiracy theory? Same crowd? Who are they? Are they “behind the scenes”? Are they “puppet masters”?
How do you explain that Obama has had record-breaking years of deportation of illegal immigrants? Do the “same crowd” puppet masters not want cheap labor in the USA? Did they want the XL pipeline stopped? Did they want gays to serve openly in the military? Did they want the Ledbetter Act that gives women to the right to redress wage inequality? Did this “same crowd” back Romney and Wall Street, or Obama? This “same crowd” seems to have interesting priorities, or else Obama is outsmarting them at every turn. The same crowd must be playing checkers. Obama is playing chess.

a. wrote: “Or is this your conspiracy theory? Same crowd? Who are they? ”
Answer: The ruling class.
asoka, you sound ridiculous. Don’t pretend that there are economic classes in society and that some classes have more property and power than others.

This guy is a whiner. He visits some of his upscale, greedy, spend-like-there’s-no-tomorrow friend and finds the “crashed and burned” … and concludes that because they have to eat their capital to survive (who the hell has “capital” except rich white kids?) that we are in a “quiet depression” … then he posits an ominous final question “how long will it stay quiet?”
I just cannot cry crocodile tears over people who were born with white privilege spoon in their mouth, don’t know what discrimination is, lived a “greed is good” 80s philosophy, created an unsustainable lifestyle, and then “crashed and burned” … they have no one to blame other than themselves for being so foolish.
Yes, there are classes in the USA. And now a certain class has lost its privilege and is doing an awful lot of whining.

Yes, I hate your dumb commentary, incessant as it is. But truly hateful? Come on anti-soak, if I was truly hateful I would have passed along your very public posts and name to a man named K…who from there might have somebody determine the possible extent of libel/slander.
But I never did that. Not bad for a “hateful guy” eh?

I tried to post this Christmas Eve. I don’t think it went through, shall we give it another go?
Welcome back LLB, Holiday cheer to ya. To bore ya to death I am gonna’ weave ya a little tale. Christmas eve here and just back from the ubiquitous family get together. We always do a Yankee swap for present giving. If you don’t know what that is your gonna have to look it up. The theme this year was bring something from the decade in which you were born. So my son and I spent yesterday rebuilding a 1953 G&E electric fan. He took it apart, sanded, oiled,painted and polished it. A 3 speed ocillilater!That was a gift from me to anyone else,(I was born in the ’50s), runs smooth as silk and will out live all of us. I pulled an old ’61 Western Electric model 500 rotary dialed phone from the barn, rewired it so it dials and rings on the new phone circuits.Cleaned it up and got the bell ringers and dial working. When that baby rings i hear angels. That was my wifes present from the 1960’s For the 80’s ( my son)I had an ’80 something Stanley Super Vacuum bottle from the Stanley works in New Britain, CT. made by Landry’s,Frary, and Clark I believe. One of the good models with SS interior and handle. That some of a bitch would keep your coffee hot for 12 hours. I think I could drop it off a roof with barely a dent. You can even cook in it. There are hundreds of old thermos recipes on the web. You now what I got? A piece of die cut crap cardboard from Walmarts made in China with 1950’s trivia on it. Most of the other gifts were gift cards from Dunkin Donuts,etc, bla bla bla established who gives a fuck when. These people all have masters degrees or Doctorates in some instances? I don’t think they could fix their pool filter or garbage disposal without calling me. I went to the school of hard knocks! Merry Christmas! Rant Over.

Well you are right in line with Agenda 21. The Global Elite want everyone packed into the cities to keep the Environment pure for the use of the Elite. In any case, good luck. I’m sure you have alot of knowledge to share with people in the city.

Bamboo grows like a weed around here in Western Mass. Cold does not bother it. The stuff is still in full leaf. My neighbor ,a newbie gardener, planted some in her yard and it jumped right under the fence and is out of control. Invasive to the max. Worse than the bayberry which is strangling everything in sight unless you are on it twice a week. It grows probably 3-4 inches a day and spreads like crazy. The cold does not seem to bother it. It is just grass after all. Maybe I will go into the fly rod buisness since the shit is now in my yard.

We (my husband, 7-year-old daughter, and another family) walked around our neighborhood and sang Christmas carols; we were spontaneously invited into several houses and were served apple cider and snacks. One neighbor said the caroling “made his Christmas”. On Christmas Eve, we walked to a children’s Mass at our local Catholic Church and participated in the beauty of hundreds of people singing about the true meaning of Christmas. We gave our daughter a total of 5 small presents, most of which we purchased by walking to stores downtown. We delivered handmade gifts and homemade cookies to neighbors, friends, and teachers. We hand-wrote all of our Christmas cards with personal notes (and drawings by our daughter) to each friend and family member. We donated to a local family in need. This was one of our best Christmases ever, as we made the conscious choice in the last few years to bring more meaning and joy to our family holidays. While Kunstler brings up many good points about the insanity of modern America (including Christmas), it is possible to bring some sanity to our lives with conscious, easy choices.

Hey Vlad, here is a linkthesurvivalpodcast.com/forum/index.php?topic=2951.0
There are hundreds of others. Just like a crockpot only no heat input after you start. not so good for a large family, but they are great for a cold day on the trail or lake. Later

That sound like a lovely respite from the madness that characterizes the season. Truly, down scaling our lives will bring an unquantifiable peace to our future. John Michael Greer’s Arch Druid Report today offers a similar perspective. Cheers and Happy New Year to all! MM

We stopped buying gifts YEARS ago (children excepted).
We find a dark pirate bar on a cold rainy night near the waterfront north of Seattle. My 92 year old mother pushes her walker through the tattooed people who, horrified, make way. Then we order beer samplers and a great meal and laugh and talk with family for 2 hours.
We got the market CORNERED on this.

a wrote: “Yes, there are classes in the USA. And now a certain class has lost its privilege and is doing an awful lot of whining.”
a, you seem to equate white working class people as a distinct class rather than people of all colours who are “working class”. You don’t understand the concept of an economic class. Also, you seem, quite frankly, to be a racist who doesn’t like white people, and who harbours a secret wish to impose some kind of bla ck ty r, ra ny on whites as revenge for history.
Jessie Jackson had it right when he said: “It doesn’t matter what colour you are when they turn out the factory lights.”
a seems to spend too much time posting comments on this blog from some remote corner of Costa Rica (I believe?). Repeating the MSM propaganda about economic recovery in the face of reality and on a collapse blog is obviously just asoka’s attempt to get attention as a troll. Boring……

Personal stories seem so quaint, in a world infected by nearly 8 billion of us… So be it.
I ditched personal transportation (gas guzzlerz) in ’93, using only my feet, rollerblades, bicycles, and public transport – and I saved so much $$$ that I “retired” in ’98, after only 8 years in the labour pool (I also had 4 years in busboy/waiter experience from ’82-86, and another 2 years as a technician in the late 80’s). Had I stayed on (and I knew this *then*), I’d be sitting on another $2$ million or so. Not hard to save when you only spend $5-8k per year…
I lived the lie that tech would save us, and when I realized that it whuz simply more of the same old landfill waste, I just couldn’t in good conscience continue milking a 6+ figure salary, and owning yet more slave labour future promises.
Because, what is money, really? Isn’t it simply IOU promissory notes from the impoverished poor to the elite slackers?

It might be a good idea for people not to try and imagine what the future might hold in store. All it can possibly do is cause anxiety and stress. No one will ever step foot in the future. No one has ever been in the future. It may be wise to make this moment, which is the only place you’ll ever be, as quality filled as possible. If people would practice doing that, the so called future would take care of itself.

We’ve had some insightful political thinkers throughout the years — James Madison, Henry Adams and Henry Jackson Turner come to mind — but can any of them compare with Barbara Streisand, who I saw interviewed by Piers Morgan on CNN the other night? This woman knows what she is talking about, you name the subject. About the interview, tho. Since Obama has become president I’ve seen a good deal of obsequious, syncopant asskissing by titans in the Media. I remember when Brian Williams interviewed Obama in 2008 it looked like he was ready to drop to his knees. Well thats how Morgan interviewed Streisand. I was embarrassed for everyone concerned.
–Panic in Year Zero

Interesting post. Nobody “gets it” completely, including James, including all of us. That’s just another in the long list of why we need each other. The “answer”, dare I say, is not homesteading or even town dwellers living the traditional family-based living arrangements based on privately owned property; but rather, in my opinion, we would be much better off living in some sort of mutually agreed to communal situation. Rather than communal meaning one thing, one way, it actually could be quite varied (the specific agreements and expectations up to the individuals involved). The commonality would be a basis of cooperation and sharing. For many of us or at least myself who dropped out in the 70s and actually lived the so-called “local economy” (I was an organic farmer for many years) I would not advocate this as the solution. I think you are correct terming this solution as being brutish, it will be in my opinion if we go that route and especially if we don’t deal with the issue of (and this is the first time I’ve seen James mention this) land or resource ownership. We advocate at least 150 people on say something like two or 300 acres, and capping basic work requirements (what’s required simply for food and shelter) at from 2 to 4 hours a day. In this situation everyone no matter how disabled or old would be able to contribute some sort of simple labor in exchange for community support and services. Now people would say, of course, that the people you are talking about would not be able to do this either. My answer to that is, unless the most able both mentally and physically are willing to do this themselves with each other and lead the way, that no, it probably won’t happen.

22,000 applicants applied for THREE-HUNDRED flight attendant jobs at Delta Airlines but according to Asoka, the economy is still climbing, climbing, climbing. A couple years ago, 11,000 people in Oakland applied for 700 jobs at WalMart. Yeah, dude, you just keep citing the Obama Administration’s version of Bernanke’s crib sheet.
He’s a tool of the media- and agency-jiggered statistics and, of course, the most important ones are swept under the rug. I don’t live in S. America, Asoka. I live here in California where a city as small as Stockton, CA had 70 murders in 2012 … so far. I don’t hear stories about masses of college kids getting plum jobs.
I still look at the graph of M1 (cash) velocity and it’s been downhill since 2008. This year’s Christmas sales were at that level, too. But you just keep repeating how great things are and maybe some people on this site will simply agree out of the exhaustion of listening to you. You should try to return to America to be a mouthpiece for Mr. Obama’s bullshit.
All over my area, I see projects under Mr. Obama’s “Reconstruction and Recovery Act” and it’s NEVER an essential piece of construction. They fix roads that weren’t that bad while the really bad roads are looking like something out of Moldova. Anybody who lives in the real world who believes these absolutely insane statistics about “growth” has a schizoid level of detachment from their senses.
Of course, the statistics about how fast money is moving and how much maritime shipping activity there is, worldwide, aren’t even given 2 minutes on Bloomberg TV. You see, it’s in everyone’s interest [sic] to keep blowing “blue sky” up everyone’s ass.
E.

Perhaps you can include a timeline with your predictions. The collapse has apparently experienced several delays. Didn’t you say that Clinton would be the last president? Are your archived columns available online? I suspect that ten years ago you were saying that I’d be scrounging for edible berries by 2013, which seems unnecessary since the grocery store I go to (open 24/7, very cheap, tremendous selection) is only 1.5 miles from my semi-suburban house and gasoline, relative to income, costs about the same as it did in 1966 (excluding the cost of the recent oil wars, yes I hear you, but even that has a parallel in Vietnam). Anyway, I very much enjoy reading your column as it’s funny and the grain of truth is there, but any pansy pundit can predict the end of the world. It’s a fact, everything ends. Tell me when so I can spend all my money and make sure I’m wearing clean underwear when the time comes.

“US unemployment applications fall to five year low!!!!” That’s the hyped stat of the day. Forgotten? US labor force participation continues to make FORTY-FIVE year lows. Of course the unemployment apps are dropping!! When people give up looking they drop out of the system’s Orwellian statistical apparatus.
Meanwhile, the list of bankrupt cities keeps piling up and the rate of mass murders incrementally climbs. But never mind that … HUZZAH THE LOWER FILINGS!!! Sigh.
E.

James said: “The transition might not be a smooth one, since it entails questions of land ownership that, historically, get settled by political upheavals.”
This isn’t “the” issue, this issue of land ownership, but it’s pretty close. As someone commented, this “made by hand” solution will likely be “brutish”. I agree, if we don’t realize that everyone has the right to the resources central to life, namely the fields and forests. But what does this mean? The tragedy of the commons? What’s interesting when you consider that we all should have a right to a place to live that we don’t have to rent or own, simply to use, to be, to live (and I’m only referring to the forest here, not improvements or finished houses) it brings up, well, a host of other issues. Namely, at the very least, how “the commons” would have to be (for this to work) managed collectively or communally. Having lived the” local economy” life for many years as an organic farmer I simply can’t advocate that for a variety of reasons. I think most who do advocate it, haven’t actually lived it. And come on, living it while getting that trust fund check, driving school bus part-time, or with a nice secure retirement check, etc. isn’t exactly the real thing. I would say if we have the consciousness to manage “the commons” collectively we might as well go all the way and enjoy the many benefits that some sort of communal living would bring such as much more efficiency and much less work required for our basic survival, plus a much richer social environment.

Hey Communal Solution that sounds a little like the collective farms set up in the Ukraine by Stalin in the early 30’s. Only problem is that ‘Kulaks’, (or peasants) didn’t want to give up their family plots so The Reds had to shoot them all, about 7 million. Then when the Collective proved unproductive — who the hell wants to work on state owned communal land — he had to shoot the collective farmers too. Pretty much everybody had to get shot to make the thing work. (Robert Conquest, ‘Harvest of Sorrow’) Not trying to be provocative, but tell me, does your scheme have a ‘5 year plan’?
–Panic in Year Zero

Well wishes to all the tribe! Not one penny spent on consumer mass hypocrisy. Invested in good food,good music and shared stories this holiday season. The World will change-how and when is known only to the ether. Those who accept change and look for the signs may do a bit better than the ones looking for a tech or gov fix. Living by one’s words and actions will become the “Coin” of the realm. We will get to JHK’s “World Made by Hand.” But the ride will not be soft or easy. Prepare. We in “THE WEST” will be the last to see the fall. Keep your eyes on the horizon of capitalism’s distant reach. Before the Ayn Rand tribe attacks…capitalism is about making money off “investments.” You work? you ain’t a capitalist! So sorry! No room for you at the Inn.The lives of the poor overseas are our firewall from reality. Yet it is a firewall that will not hold. The MASS MEDIA tools that keep talking about the “End of the Century” for dire consequences are cranking out propaganda. Think of it as a giant sleeping pill for the masses. Major changes in all areas of human endeavors will be here much,much sooner.

Social and economic life has never worked well, has never seen human kind (in mass) rise to its highest level possible, when life has been based primarily upon trade, barter, money, family and property (whether on the local or global level). I know this isn’t a popular view, nevertheless I think it’s important to say because at this blog I assume we are considering answers to the human dilemma. Being someone who has lived the “local economy” idea as an organic farmer for many years and in my later years read many books analyzing socio-economics I have to say this. Freedom is important and does work, but simply saying capitalism works ignores so much. It doesn’t matter whether the people are “rainbow people”, Hare Krishna’s, vegetarians, progressive liberals or die hard libertarian conservatives, simply producing goods and services to sell and trade is not enough, it’s too, as someone said “brutish” and so there is a steady migration towards clever ways to exploit one another such as rent, buying low and selling high (flipping high-value items), usury and of course jobs in the” system”. While some sort of communal living situation, I know, is not a popular idea, it’s still interesting to me that so few would even consider offering that most God-given right, a right to, a share of this most basic resource necessary of human kind, the forest. We actually claim we care about one another and yet do not even offer this to one another as an option for our survival?

Henry, well at least you got a sense of humor, that’s good, that’s appreciated. I hear you. No way would I want to be on a “collective farm” whether in Russia or China. In order for any sort of communal agreements and expectations to work well they have to be entered into voluntarily and be something that every individual desires. Simplification and generalizing, well, it’s tempting and sometimes I think it’s useful, but oftentimes not. The carnage from capitalism may be well hidden whereas the carnage from forced communism overt, nevertheless, I think if there was an honest tally they wouldn’t be too far apart. Simple material abundance is not a showcase when there is not a corresponding rise in human consciousness, freedom or spirit. And it looks like now this technology and material abundance might lead to the frying of the planet along of course with overpopulation.

In a family, we don’t buy from one another so much as we naturally share. We look to give and serve more than to receive and be served. Thus if we could only see ourselves as integral members in the human family along with our brother/sisters from the other kingdoms of flora and fauna, we could choose to live in accord with that fact of Life. We could take a long break from the paradigm of struggling for self-interest, short-term happiness, and seeking to enhance or temporary ego-identities.
Is pure love the answer, the remedy, the source of creativity? Is it the way to go?

Ya, Communal Solution, I was just being snarky and Busting your Balls a little bit. Forgive me for that. You have some pretty good ideas … I’ve thought along the same lines myself, except more family based, several or more generations living in one place; Pretty much like it was until the Factory System got set up here in New England more than a century ago. Keep posting on this site; you have some interesting things to say.
–Panic in Year Zero

Very good ideas and discussion, Communal Solution, ront, and Henry M.
Communal – 150 people on 300 acres, with communal work and living arrangements sounds possibly doable and logical. And you seemed to have “walked the talk.” So let me pick at your brain a little more.
One person/two acres would seem to presuppose wonderfully fertile agricultural land, sufficient water, little loss to pests, etc.
ABSENT such perfect conditions, 1person/2acres seems to make an assumption of a “larger commons.”
This could be land for grazing, etc – OR it could be food inputs from the larger civilized society, aka “big ag.”
========================
Another question – doesn’t 150 people come close to the largest desirable number for life in a “band” which is traditionally made up of several families.
So – – how do your groups propose to handle family loyalties, etc. And what do you find important as regards common cultural heritage, etc, especially if situations become more stressful than is common in the US today?

“There will NEVER be an old white Protestant Christian male. Future presidents will be women, non-white, atheist, or young … but you won’t be seeing your kind elected president again.”
-asoka..rewriting mlk’s vision-
“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged content of their character – BUT by the color of their skin, their age and the arrangement of their external genitalia.”
-martin..luther..asoka..king-
Dee Jones once said asoka..had a “mirror of love.”
I wish Dee would come back to observe that the asoka..mirror is looking more and more like a hairy ass surrounding a gaping anal opening.

“The new South will be solidly Democratic and pro-abortion, pro-feminist, pro-union, pro-immigration (sorry, P4C!).”
You need not apologize to me, asoka..
Apologize to the environment as it becomes incapable supporting so many humans, here.
And apologize to our native born blacks – who will be displaced by your “immigrant wave” and whose children who somehow manage to survive collapse will likely find themselves economic slaves of new “immigrant masters.”
There is a better way numbersusa.com/content/nusablog/beckr/december-24-2012/how-do-you-suggest-helping-needy-people-other…

All I want for Christmas is the truth.
I guess an independent, self sustainable life style would be a close second.
Still – the elephant worth discussing; at what point will the west be squeezed into energy awareness……?
Could be a long ways off – certainly no use complaining while we waste what’s left….

To progress 4 conserving:
The trickiest part about this or any other cooperative and free association amongst people of any size, are not the details but rather the basic ethics and goal that the people would be united about. It’s this unity, I believe, would allow people to democratically function. No one person can, should or even ever does have all the answers (or any more power than anyone else). We try to state as few details on the website as possible and concentrate on the unifying principles, ethics and goal. Ultimately, we can only state the type of commune we’d like to live in and not what we think would work for everyone or what everyone else would want. What I’m rewriting the website now, those central issues are there now for anyone to read.
Regarding your question about 150 people, we used to think 300 because we heard that at The Farm in Tennessee they discovered they could cook for 300 and one kitchen but no more. Then recently we came across some discussion about 150 being a better number (almost a universal number) for cohesive groups of human beings. Ultimately, I don’t think anyone knows exactly. It just needs to be done so that these things can be learned from experience. Same thing for the amount of land. And, too, we are simply suggesting what we believe to be a realistic starting point. Again, it’s the principle of the thing, the basics of what we want to do and share in common , not the details how to actually do it. Suggesting something be communal and then telling everyone how it’s going to be would be an obvious contradiction. Not to mention, it just wouldn’t work that way. Again, no one person has all the answers that’s exactly why we need each other. We thought about how things might work? Of course, we certainly wouldn’t suggest something we had no idea at all how to manifest or how to make it work.
The challenge though, is that what you might call the communal spirit, that special spirit of tolerance, humility and the ability to live with the degree of simplicity; once that’s lost it’s hard to get it back to matter how great the suffering. An example of this might be the Native Americans on their reservations (before the casinos of course) and of people in third world countries picking through dumps rather than cooperating and sharing.
Anyway, I hope this gives you some answers or ideas.

I hung out with some intentional community folks once. This one would aptly be described as a hippie commune. The biggest problem that I noticed was the slackers. Some of the ones that had been there awhile and were kind of managers were the worst. Others that had been there awhile and were kind of managers were the only ones keeping the thing together. Another problem was that nobody ever had any spending money, like for a few PBR’s on occasion.
The nice thing was that the land was awesome. This one had started awhile back, before the land prices went through the roof. They’re sitting on millions of dollars worth of land. The hippies were just kind of caretakers at the point I got there. The original folks that were still there were getting up there in age.

Hola and Feliz Navidad!
We also live in the beautiful mountians of Costa Rica.
Am enjoying very much the much slower pace of life here, altho it is being speeded up by forces outside. You used to hardly ever see someone with a cell phone here, now almost everyone has one.
But, its still nice.
Hope you all have a good next year.
And a special Hola to Asoka!
Dee

Well I’ll be.
My ability to conjure up old posters out of thin air never ceases to amaze me.
Let’s try a couple more:
Come back Wage Laborer
Come back Hancock1863
Come back diogen, orionoir, and many others
———————–
And Communal Solution – good ideas, thanks.
I’ve always thought that 15 was about the maximum workable extended family size.
So – ten extended families like that would form your community. I think you’re off by a factor of 2 to 10 on required acreage to really support that many folks – but at least you’re doing something and putting some ideas out there for discussion.
On a side note – in a “traditional?” subdivision with 1/2

oops – posted too early
1/2 acre lots, and assuming 4 people per house – 150 people would be roughly 37 houses or 16 acres – probably 25 acres +/- when streets, drainage basins, and common areas are taken into account.
So – – there is more capability and redundancy in suburban living than many people assume.
The problem would be organization, common purpose, and “community spirit.”
Of course hunger and want are powerful motivators – or so history teaches us.
====================
There is a creek on US HWY 441, just north of Dublin, Georgia that is named “Hunger and Hardship Creek.” It’s on the maps and has its own road sign.
I never once rode across that creek with my mom – who came up pretty hard, herself, in the Depression-era South –
That she did not make a comment to mask her inward shudder, something to the effect of,”Why on Earth would they want to name a creek after a thing like that?”

To Mountain gal,
I was just re-looking over the posts and discovered yours and had to say something. Having had been a full-time organic farmer in New Hampshire for many years (having dropped out in the 70s and never dropped back in) I have thought of saying much of what you said in your post. The people enamored with the “local economy idea” seem in large part comfortably retired baby boomers, not the people who have actually been doing it for always years. People seem to forget what went on in the 60s and 70s, The Whole Earth Catalog, the Mother Earth News, Helen and Scott Nearing and on and on. Still, you’re probably not going to like what I have to say. Hippies and alternative people seem as disinterested in communal living as conservative libertarians. But what I have to say is this: nobody studied what they were doing back then when they were trying to live communally. Nobody read any books, at least about socioeconomic theory and anarchism. There were no elder leaders. If any of this had existed people might have known that there is another way to go about this altogether. It was always modeled on the family and never community, never about individual freedom. Parameters have to be set from the beginning especially about work and about endless material enhancement. Groups can be just as deranged as individuals, arranged with both Puritanism and greed. Following leaders, on land that one individual owns and too small of groups was and is just a recipe for disaster.

“Employers took 1,759 mass layoff actions in November involving 173,558 workers as
measured by new filings for unemployment insurance benefits during the month, the U.S.
Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. (Data are seasonally adjusted.) Each mass
layoff involved at least 50 workers from a single employer. Mass layoff events increased
by 399 from October, and the number of associated initial claims increased by 42,385.
Mass layoff data for November reflect the impact of Hurricane Sandy on workers in
New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania. In November, 413 mass layoff events were reported
in the manufacturing sector resulting in 49,169 initial claims. Monthly mass layoff data
are identified using administrative data sources without regard to layoff duration. (See
table 1 and the note at the end of this release”
source: bls.gov/

Notice her special hello to Asoka for your benefit. You have to understand that to people like Dee – equality means Blacks over Whites – as long it’s not her.
Of course all Conservative Whites love Martin Luther King – it’s required by the Party. Yet are we sure that this Communist really meant what he said about equality and contents of character? None of his followers did – their Communism means Blacks Supremacy.
Very few things are what they seem anymore – or for a long time now. Everyone here understands that Capitalists don’t believe in Capitalism, right? That it’s just their vehicle to attain and hold power? Capitalism is what you make the other sucker do. For you and yours, “Competition is a sin”. Socialism and Communism? The same – just a vehicle for personal and/or ethnic supremeacy. The Welfare State? The same.

So are you talking about absolute equality with no Elders? As if everyone is equal in terms of Committment, Experience, and of course raw mentality or IQ?
Democracy or Consensus – the latter is far too bulky I’ve heard. Some will never be reasonable or they just feel too strongly to bend.
The Kids? If being able to live this way is a special gift, the kids probably wont have it. How ya gonna keep ’em down on the Farm (Stephen Gaskin, very charismatic leader and thus the opposite of your model) when they seen Paree?
What happens: endless discussion around the fire, pass the feather, etc. The real decisons will be made by the Few who really care and know. This is how is should be, must be, and is. Thus the question is no one of to have an Elite or not have an Elite – the question is how to have a good Elite.

Ah, old Radish Vodka is still here, drunk on his own ego, spewing his racist hate and venom. What a pathetic idiot….
Keep up the posts Asoka, I just got tired of it, and have much better things to do anyway.
Hows Ecuador?
Peace, Dee 🙂

We had a great Christmas here in Oklahoma. It was centered around a small community, family, friends, and the Methodist Church. We sang carols to shut-ins and nursing home residents. Christmas eve services were had, topped off with lots of good home-made food, opening of gifts, with a big fire in the fireplace, and a shot of single malt scotch. It was a real delight!
Peace,Priv

James _ THANK YOU for refreshing my mind and spirit with your work, your writing and your being!
Check out Yahoo News “8 careers for the future” (or whatever the hell they called the ‘8 careers’ article….. Public Relations was near the top!!!!!!!
No mention of clean water or electricity or food production….
wow
maybe this presently unsustainable hallucination of a a culture really could go on forever !!!!!!!!
I am so grateful for your efforts, especially those times wen you must be so angry, yet still manage to take a deep breath and write joyously about your insights – Thank You James – Happy New Year

I guess it’s obvious we have to do something differently or at least many things differently. And doing something different is probably going to take some trial and error and learning.
But something like what I’m suggesting, well, the personal risks are substantial (of course for this society to do nothing at all is also risky). But it is because of these risks that it has to be awfully well thought out, at least for myself to be involved. I’ve had experience with people who think we can just get together in a room and figure it out. Once you’ve tried that, you never want to do it again.
No, people have to think for themselves, first, what they want both in terms of ethics shared and goals shared. Once people have figured those out for themselves then they will know who they can cooperate with democratically. Democracy is the process which allows the thing to function. Democratic decisions, to me, are about the details not the critical foundation of the thing. This is a big difference. I fully understand about being steered by the Democratic mob, but if the Democratic mob is obligated to follow the Constitution of whatever social organization they represent, then they’re headed for trouble if they deviate from the Constitution.
People can destroy anything. That’s always a risk. But destruction is not necessarily in anyone’s best self interest.
In conclusion, I’d rather follow the Democratic mob (that I chose to be with) with a good Constitution than to allow some individual or individuals to make all the decisions. I understand respect for experience, age and smarts; these should be acknowledged and listened to, of course.

Tell ya what. In order to save what is left of our oh so fragile environment, it will take a level of international cooperation that has simply never existed on this planet. Hell, if anything, we are going in the COMPLETELY opposite direction as we gear up for competition over the last of the planet’s resources.
An ode to the new city. Let us rock…youtube.com/watch?v=sF369vRRAWE

Might work in the first generation since people who like such communities will be very highly motivated, have chosen and accepted the Constitution and Vision, etc. But the problem is the 2nd generation. You’ll have to expect a profound Rumspringa in any case.
And long term the prospects are bleak: High IQ people like the First Generation give birth to kids of lower IQ – this is called regression to the norm. And they wont be nearly as motivated since they never chose it. So ordinary people making decisons by vote? Scarey: it never worked in Ancient Greece. The people vote to open the treasury. Direct Democracy is still practiced in some small New England Towns. My Professor said in his town of 13,000, a few hundred participated regularly. When people aren’t excluded, they will exclude themselves. Just another expression of Hierarchy.

“Hell, if anything, we are going in the COMPLETELY opposite direction as we gear up for competition over the last of the planet’s resources.”
-x-
Yeah, x, you’ve got that right.
I think I’m glad I’m in the States.
Because we are certain to be the “last man standing,” it now appears. And I prefer standing.
And I’m glad that I come from a long line of people (tough Brits, and Scots, and Scotch-Irish) who always try to do the right thing, before they finally are forced to join in the fight in a (usually successful, so far) struggle to survive.
Let the games begin, clusterfuckers!
===========================
And I just got banned from further posting on immigration at Arch Druid. So, yeah, I’m venting on CFN. What the hell is wrong with people.
The man thinks that the US will have a post-collapse population of 30 million max.
But he won’t do anything to stop the disaster.
One more person votes for death by inaction.
Amazing.

“Notice her special hello to Asoka for your benefit. You have to understand that to people like Dee – equality means Blacks over Whites – as long it’s not her.” -rv-
Yeah, I caught the hello – I’m more surprised that she’s apparently been trolling this whole time, looking for someone to say “Dee Jones,” so she had a reason to respond.
Dee’s a ditz – and I don’t mean that in a terribly disrespectful manner. She’s just shallow, ditzy – I’ve known hundreds like her.
I don’t think most folks like that want “blacks over whites” as much as they want Western Civilization (dead white males?) to get its BIG Comeuppance.
Most ditzy “libs” like that don’t care what comes after Western Civilization – just as long as it’s not based on the thoughts of those Dead White Males.
This belief is probably quite short-sighted.
Given the arc of history.
=========================
I will give you credit for two more things, RV.
You got me posting at Archie the Druid.
I got my own self banned.
You pointed out that the Arch Druid was an Arch Fink – which may be true, jury’s still out.
And you had one very funny and very true line over at Archies place.
To paraphrase, you said that that “playing loud music and having lots of children” did not mean that the Mexican/Latinos were a truly dynamic or worthwhile culture.
That’s funny. I needed a laugh. Thank you.
And it’s also true. Which is less funny, considering the present arc of American demographics.

De nada Prog, de nada. Gratis! Ex
Gladio Libertas! Freedom Comes from the Sword! So does Tyranny – it depends on the Wielders and the People behind them.
When did you post and get banned? This week? I’ll go and take a look.
Just out from Alex Jones: Facebook is throwing masses of people off Facebook – anyone who speaks in favor of the 2nd Ammendment or has info about guns.
As for Dee: how can anyone who cherishes such hatred have a clear mind and without a clear mind, where is freedom, be it personal or political?
What about me? I’ll give credit where it’s due. One of my favorite shows is The Shark Tank. The Black guy on the show, the founder of the clothing line FUBU (For Us By Us) is just as sharp as the others and made his fortune honestly.
The Black African Priest at my parish has a passion for the Gospel that puts almost all White Priests to shame. He is overwhelmed by it, on fire.
Arch Druid: He wasn’t hard to see, describing Mexico with words like “proud”, “vibrant” and how he wished he could live to see the Asian/Hispanic Civilization that would arise on the West Coast. I mean that’s what the Phillipines are. What’s the big deal? Not quite – the Chinese are far too proud at the higher level to mix. They will be most of the upper class.

Indeed, K-DOG, … “the casualties of ignorance mount”. We are living in a “soft” totalitarian state where small businesses get shaken down by the IRS and state governments while major felons like Goldman and BofA get slaps on the wrist. The small-time traders in the big Wall Street firms are the fall guys while the big nabobs deny all knowledge of trades gone wrong.
As many commercials about tax relief attest, individuals are being chased down for every spare dollar owed the Feds. Our equivalent of Joseph Goebbels drum up blue sky stats and bury the really damning ones. When will reality hit? When one fine week it just falls apart with no warning from anyone and instantaneous martial law with no recourse for anyone but the ultra-rich.
I believe it will hit like a lightning bolt because the whole point of all this financial “alchemy” is to bury the bones until 11:59 pm, metaphorically. Indeed, EVERYTHING since 2008 has been PANIC CONTROL. However, the Rex 84 project reveals all i.e., that the tens of millions of the ruined will be in detainment camps for their “protection” and the government itself will BE THE MAFIA.
E.

Fuck x-mas. It stems from an imported religion, and while it is a time when people exhibit alot of what amounts to self serving altruism, rest assured, everyone will go back to the usual ” I got mine, so fuck everyone else” attitude and it’s new variant, “I don’t have mine so I don’t want anybody else to have it either” when it’s over and the lights come down and the heating bills go up and people realize they were pressured into buying all this crap they really couldn’t afford and then poor x-mas sales start to close down what’s left of the ghost malls, the increasingly abandoned strip malls, and the big box retailers, furniture stores in particular.
Some other poster tried to paint a rosey picture of what’s happening in Detroit and the surrounding suburbs. Nothing could be further from the truth. I volunteered for a double shift on x-mas, 16 hours of time and a half…while my slave driving employers still pay holiday pay and while my job still lasts. The healthcare industry is slowly imploding and will collapse along with the auto industry, the retirement system, the public school system, and just about everything else. Hospitals are closing in poorer areas and consolidating, they are scaling back help and laying people off, at a time when the state is on steroids. They are broke and so they send their surveyors/inspectors out on a mission to fine, penalize, or steal as much money as they can from the hospitals and retirement homes. Our good governor Rick Snyder just signed a “right to work” law that targets unions……except for police and fire fighter’s unions, they don’t want them bickering amongst themselves. They are exempt from the new law. The unemployment rate along with the poverty level and visible deterioration of that veritable hell called Detroit and its suburbs are clearly visible. The bed bug and scabies parasites have become an epidemic. The Detroit police have been forced to take a 10% paycut and work 12 hour shifts, prompting them to warn people to enter Detroit at their own risk…which was always basically true and known by anyone who lived in the suburbs.
On my 45 minute trek to work, the embankments along I-696 have been landscaped, planted with shrubs and flowering bushes. How nice that will look 5-10 years from now with a pot hole strewn freeway with few, if any cars driving on it. I wonder how much money they wasted on that. They will wish they had planted food crops instead. The irony of it all, the masses are still in denial, think that housing values will recover, that the boarded up stores will return, and of course, that there will always be more oil and endless natural gas. “They just discovered oil in North Dakota”, the submoronic denialists now state with their endless, simplistic magic bullets and cures…technology, endless oil, we are too big to fail, and the most pathetic, “God” or even worse, ‘Jesus’ would never allow this to happen. Endless growth will return, this is just a recession, and on and on. I have given up trying to warn anyone. They will get caught off guard and go down with the ship. Many already have.
I had stockpiled up on some freeze dried food, taken to growing some vegetables in my backyard. Only problem is, my backyard is small and shady, I bought this little shanty during the peak housing bubble, I still owe on it big time and it and would not likely get 1/4 back of what I purchased it for. I dumped my Ninja supercharged GT with a 427 cobra jet engine put in place of the original engine last year while some redneck was stupid enough to buy it. I have tried to find work closer to home but the market is now saturated around here as everyone now wants to get into healthcare, so I am stuck making the 45 minute commute, and hour and a half each day. I want to install wood burning stoves in my living room and basement, but would have to pass city codes, inspections, and of course, probably some permit or fee. That aside, I can’t afford it. Too much debt to pay off first. I had a 12 guage and a 38 for clay pigeon shooting/self defense, was thinking of upgrading to the AK level, but then I read where the mother of that deranged punk kid that shot up that school in CT knew the US economy was collapsing, had stockpiled food and purchased arms and started target shooting in what would seem to try and survive the collapse. Ironically, she couldn’t survive her own son,let alone the anarchy that will come, and my wife couldn’t fight her way out of a paper bag, so I am thinking it’s an act of futility when roaming gangs, warlords, and maybe even agents from the local, state, and federal government go from house to house to confiscate or steal or extort things people buy to prepare for the collapse. The gangs will steal it or take in return for protection, the government would take it because you still owe this or that bank or creditor or you didn’t pay your taxes or that $10,000 fine for your driveway being wet after a rainstorm, or collecting rain water, trying to grow your own food, to to sell lemonade without some expensive permit or license, and all the other neat stunts they pull to try in vain to fix what will be chronic budget shortfalls due to ever an ever eroding tax base. They will serve their masters well until the bitter end.
So I come home from my stressful, depressing job, wondering how long it will last, watching all the lemmings race towards the cliff, most totally unaware of what kind of post carbon/deindustrialized world is going to crash down on them and I can’t dive into the bottom of a hefty quantity of ethanol until my senses are dulled. I hate x-mas and can’t wait until all this bullshit is over and the collapse runs its course. It couldn’t have happened to a nicer bunch people.

Could some forceful minority usurp the Constitution? I guess anything is possible, but it would be quite a ruckus. And I’ve always said people can destroy anything if they want to bad enough. There are never any ultimate guarantees in life.
As for second generations and such, I would point to the Hutterites, an anti-Baptist sect that migrated from Europe in the 1800s. There are over 150 communes in central United States and Canada, still. Like the Amish, some young choose to leave but many or most choose to stay.
And finally, it’s what’s in the Constitution that makes or breaks democracy. You’re absolutely right, the primary ethics and goals of a Democratic body can absolutely not be up for a vote.

I could care less about Christmas anymore in the traditional sense. I’ve tried to get family to have xmas just be about family but still everyone wants to give gifts. This year I got two pairs of pajama pants even though the pants they bought me in 2010 still work just fine, HA!
I really write this because 3 1/2 years ago my girlfriend, now wife, and I moved from a large metropolis to a rural town. Now she wants back into “the Matrix” and wants to take our daughter with her. We have been fortunate to have flexible, high paying jobs and have a setup where we are reasonably buffered from the impending calamities. So that’s how I spent my xmas. Trying to balance the friends and family who still don’t understand the predicaments we face versus the true compassion of saving the family.
Over the last three years we have raised & butchered chickens, kept bees, gardened, preserved, plants hundreds of fruit/nut trees (many were killed in the 2012 drought)and worked (really, mainly I worked) to establish ourselves in the local community. I like the small town life. I like knowing he mayor’s wife and other town officals unlike the major metropolis where it basically has to be your slimey, full-time job to attend black tie benefits and back room deal your way to wherever not too mention live buried in the rat race and battle traffic at all times ‘cept for the wee hours of the morning.
I don’t know if I can go back. Urban anything, especially in a large metropolis, is pretty much a hobby as anything you would find at a craft store. I doubt many Americans would sign up to walk miles for water and then haul it up any more than two flights of stairs daily.
So what have I learned 3.5 years into a semi-failing experiment:
– know yourself the best you can (though this at best is a challenge since self-providing is a foreign art)
-know your partner (if you can’t know yourself how can you know someone else)
-homesteading/farming can be a lonely and thankless practice
-Lastly, to quote Bukowski “If you’re going to go, go all the way”

JK,
You know I am getting a little miffed. You consistently rage on about the end of “sprawl” and how its all coming down – it all coming “local.”
Ok – I bought your Kool Aid – but as I kept sipping I thought about discretionary energy consumption.
Come on! We both know before any of you Walmart/BigBox Store Sprawl America crashes – a “whole lot” of discretionary petroleum consumption will have to cease.
Before we crash suburbia – we have to crash most if not all of Pro-sports and Nascar. Most of the auto-tourism industry, (including Disneyland etc) and just a big – I mean really mean BIG pile smoking wasted passenger vehicle activities.
Gee-whiz Jim – we still have people cruising their cars for fucking smoke breaks……..
Before your catastrophic suburban demise starts, more than few warning signs will appear. And I haven’t seen any of them yet.
If the Clusterfuck is really so imminent; why does it take a hurricane just to close down a marathon or create a line of cars at a gas station?
And most of all – why isn’t discretionary energy consumption the ongoing topic and subject matter of this Blog?
Fuck the end of suburbia. I just want to know when the end of wasteful consumption even starts.
Your year-end forecasts for 2013 shall require an acceptably plausible rebuttal to this rant……
Does it exist?

Tripp,
Like many here I enjoy reading about your journey back to basics, and that you truly seem to love it. The thing that I question about the self assured conviction you often express in your posts, is why then, you need to be invested in what happens to the outside world? Sometimes anticipating the SHTF moment et al, similar to JHK and the guy with the bamboo. Reminds me a little of the Christians who seem as if they can’t wait for the Apocalypse, presumably because then they will be proven right.
One day, you’re children will grow up and perhaps decide they want to leave for University and a more conventional life. In the end, it will probably prove out that the choices you made are just best for you, and nothing more, and right or wrong, that should be enough. When the time comes, I hope you’ll be able to make your peace with that.

What a tragedy – especially as the Divorce Courts favor the Woman all the way. She can present as you as survivalist, racist nut who lives in a “compound”.
As you say, “all the way”. The Globalists want people in the City. Either do what they want or get way out. The suburbs are a bullshit compromise that will not be safe or self sufficient.
What is her rationale anyway?

How many intentional communities have lasted for several generations – or say since the 60’s? It seems to me that Religion is the real glue, though I admit for some, Leftist Ideology can take the place of religion. But will their kids feel the same? Gaia worsip, which is what deep ecology typically is, might be a sufficient inter-generational glue. The High Priests, like Tripp, would have a rational understanding as well as the feeling. For the rest, basic belief, ritual, and folk ways – corn dollies, harvest home, ritual intercourse, killing the corn king, etc. One culture would have a couple have intercourse on underneath a huge pile of logs which would be released to crush them. Remember folks, Great Mother worship is usually a human sacrafice religion.

little laddie lederhosen (aka RaduVoda, hyena of the Empire), is a turncoat, spurious fascist, piece of filth who does not deserve [or require] any of your responses to continue spewing his repugnant repellents of rational discourse. He works for da man and actually holds no views of his own, whatsoever. His “opinions” are nothing but a delaying and subject-steering tactic to continue to promote division and blindfolding of priorities.
How do I know?
Christonacrutch! If you can’t figure it out, I have no truck with your future, or those you choose to associate with. Arm and prepare; the era of the legion of liars and stone-cold killers approaches. Enslavement is their only proposed alternative to death. Stand and defy death or crawl in eternal servitude. This is the basis of the modern military: Deception and disregard for life, in total. (Seems to resemble modern X-ianity; the death-cult unchained and unexamined.)

Have any of you CFNers ever “stalked the wild asparagus”, or “stalked the blue-eyed scallop”? Thanks.
“Although Gibbons longed to be a writer, he had difficulty getting published. However, capitalizing on the growing return-to-nature movement in 1962, his first book, Stalking the Wild Asparagus, became an instant success.
Gibbons then produced the cookbooks Stalking the Blue-Eyed Scallop in 1964 and Stalking the Healthful Herbs in 1966.”en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euell_Gibbons

“”Notice her special hello to Asoka for your benefit. You have to understand that to people like Dee – equality means Blacks over Whites – as long it’s not her.” -rv-
Yeah, I caught the hello – I’m more surprised that she’s apparently been trolling this whole time, looking for someone to say “Dee Jones,” so she had a reason to respond.”
Ah, Flad & Pee&See are now giving each other hand jobs, how sweet.
FYI: One of the reasons I have not posted here in quite awhile is because I evidently have something you lack – a Life. Oh, I like to read Jims comments once in awhile, but it may be late Sat nite or Sund morn when I feel the need for a good laugh.
I still applaud Asoka for keeping up his Gadfly appearances, but really, I actually do have much better things to do.
Hasta whatever looooosers.
Dee;)

I just want to reassure all of the CFNers out there (and others too) that all-is-not-lost, and that even in even in the future, post-collapse dystopia that P’…ssy will still be there. Thank you and Merry F…ck’n Christmas!

Have you ever noticed that society glorifies “grovelling” and “self-humiliation” (i.e., “work” in the absence of rights)?
Shouldn’t “work” be embarrassing? I suspect that the rich-and-powerful would themselves consider it embarrassing to have to “work”?

hey Puck, although I have never stalked the wild asparagus, a coupla’ years ago while off-road mountain biking I came upon a huge patch of just emerging stalks. They were delicious, and the spot is still my little secret. Every spring I go back and grab a bunch or two. I am not sure if over picking will slow down production. Hadley, MA in the CT. River valley is the asparagus capital of the world. The king of vegetables. Just hold your nose when you pee :o). From what I understand these stalks come up for years. I tried them in my garden but after a few years they went kapput for some reason.

Stelmosfire, Thanks for the reference.
When I worked at a warehouse one summer in high school, a skinny black co-worker used to laugh at white people. He thought that it was funny that white people eat “pine cones”. Apparently, urban black people are not into natural foods. They seemed to prefer greasy, deep fried foods.

I just took a trip around the Earth in my short pants. I had a Paypal problem. I buy most of my stuff on-line to avoid taxes. Uh-oh watch list again. Anyway ,I went from Taiwan, Philippines,Shanghai,finally Atlanta. Problem fixed. I actually enjoy talking to the folks around the world. I think they actually like to talk to other polite Earth beings. They all talk english, maybe a little hard to understand. Better than the guys in Holyoke, although I think they are fakin’ it. Anyway, problem fixed, all is well. Sleep tight and don’t let the bedbugs bite!

What did I say now that has so upset you? I’m interested in Eastern Religions – and thus in the Americans and Europeans who pracitice them – or anyone who seeks meaning outside the mainstream. What is so unbelievable about that? I’m having a nice discussion with Communal about these things. He’s shown himself to be very honest and forthcoming about how real human being operate. This is most refreshing since most Liberals are idealists about people – a big mistake.
You of course project your hatred onto people who question Liberalism. And me in particular, since I call you on your hypocrisy about guns and Jews.

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“Flad” “Pee&See” “hand jobs”
Gee, Dee – Three nasty sexual innuendos in one little post. You have issues, young lady.
It’s easy to pick out the basic personality and beliefs of a poster if you watch them for a while.
And sure, asoka..is a gadfly. That’s OK, although annoying. But he’s also a racist and filled with hate, which he occasionally makes manifest. This should should never be excused – and certainly never praised on a forum like this.
Ah well. Happy New Year, Dear.

Mornin’ Vlad. St. Vitus, a great song! I’ve got the album on vinyl! I guess I’m showing my age now. When I was a kid I would go to the local music store every payday and buy 4-5 albums. I have maybe 3-4 thousand. It drives my wife nuts. They take up a lot of space and I really don’t spin them very often!youtube.com/watch?v=p6MZxG04-hY

IMO economics is at best a useless pseudoscience, its practioners dismal, droning, bespectacled nerds eating up scarce academic resources. Show me an economist and I’ll show you a dickhead that didn’t have the intellectual means to go where really smart people go ie the hard sciences, medicine, engineering.
But, at worst economics is harmful, its practitioners nothing more than lickspittles for economic or political interests be they Wall Street banks, multinational conglomerates or domestic industry associations.
While economists can’t do prediction worth a damn, they distinguish themselves hilariously enough by being fully as useless at postdiction.
And I have a really hard time deciding which are more worthy of scorn, accountants or economists, so many of both fields seeming to be working overtime to make lawyers look good.
So governments produce statistics. Big hairy fucking deal. Numerical mirages is what they are.
Recovery in the housing market? Let’s assume that government produced stats are worth a damn which in itself is a highly dubious proposition. Look at housing starts per million of population in the US and compare recent years with 1960, 1970, 1980, 1990 and what do you see? Recovery? That’s what the cheerleaders for the PTB would tell you.
Depending on the politics of the economist or who he works for and you’ll get widely varying intepretations of numbers or wildly varying policy prescriptions. Which to my own eye is nothing more than “spinning” ie the highly disreputable work of professional liars.
What do I see from these govt housing stats? I see a segment of the economy in severe distress, producing new houses at a rate per million people far below that of previous decades. But you have spinners like on this site touting the don’t worry, all is well hogwash.
All is well for sure for the top one percent which in the past 40 years has done marvelously well by screwing everyone else.
But nevermind these statistical conjurations. As you say, what do your own eyes tell you? And also your ears. Listen to the accounts of marital mayhem, the collateral damage to generations worth of imbecilic policy and outright fraud and thievery and idiocy in the American elite. What’s happening to the American family? This is one place to attend to the evidence of your own eyes and ears.
As an economic unit, it doesn’t work anymore because American dads can’t get steady, decent paying work. And moms don’t want a man in the house that doesn’t bring home the bacon and so as a sexual union it doesn’t work either.
So bye bye daddy, hello a string of temporary male “partners” whose connection to women and their young ones is shaky at best, providing the lonely, divorced gal with nights out and some re-assurance that they’re still attractive. These male temps, who are little more than social and sexual accessories, who couldn’t handle the obligation of providing for their own kids, sure as hell don’t want some other guy’s. And so hello to a generation of messed up, stressed out kids.
Messed up and stressed out? You bet, it’s hardwired into them by uncounted generations of evolution that their own survival depends on an intact family unit where both male and female parents are dedicated to the provision and protection of little ones. How do I know? I’ve seen the calamitous effects of marital crackups on kids in our own clan. Two families with a total of four kids broke up, two of the kids became so depressed as to require medical care. One of them attempted suicide. Twice.
And I’ve told the story of a childhood friend whose parents broke up. Little Paul bounced between households and went from a happy, healthy kid to an anxious, tired little guy with dark rings under his eyes whose schoolwork fell apart and then, as he grew up, to a nasty, scowling thug by his early teens. No doubt we all have similar stories. This is another place to believe the evidence of your own eyes.
It takes a village to raise a kid? Bullshit. It takes an idiot (or maybe a spaced out sociologist or ideologue stinking up an institution of higher learning) to spout crap like this. The kid needs and instinctively wants his/her mommy and daddy pure and simple. The “village” doesn’t want the burden of caring for and feeding kids whose parents can’t or won’t. Each parent has the worry and pre-occupation of their own offspring and they don’t want to worry about someone else’s.

Integrated Circuits
I was reading that chips, CPUs now have a billion transistors and such: wow what a waste! all of those possible signals and interactions all dedicated to a one point linear logic, to solve a “problem”, and such. What they should do is create thousands of independent signals and circuits criss crossing each other and interacting randomly, the expression of independence and randomness, or each its own goals and programs independently from the other paths and colliding every now and then, interacting and messing up everything, just like any model of an economic system should express independent will powers and goals colliding conflicting, influencing each other and destroying the others plan and goal, the other “program”, but sometimes collaborating, and sometimes creating temporary aggregations of common goals, only to depart and collide or conflict or ignore each other and such. Imagine how many possible circuits and interactions, programs and chunks of goals all talking at the same time, not there to solve any logical problem (NAY, TO CREATE EVER MORE PROBLEMS, TO CREATE EVER MORE IMPOSSIBILITIES!) but there to express parallel interactions, point like interactions happening in parallel, all at the same time, simultaneously and doing all kinds of surprising things and such.
With a billions transistors you can have so many signals and processors, each different and so many microprograms doing all kinds of wild stuff, all kinds of insane stuff that leads to nowhere, since the real goal is to break away from logic and break away from the past, to see really new things, mysterious things, things that cannot be decomposed into any kind of logic, wild and parallel and full of analog signals along with digital signals, imagine how many wild registers and circuits, all kinds of wild and crazy circuits, all kinds of crazy things, with so many millions of transistors there are trillions upon trillions of combinations all crazy and cool, all insane, just like reality, where no possible laws can operate, where logic is finally defeated and a new brain is created and such.
Scientific Research should not discover laws, it should hide them, demolish them, we need to understand and be on top of things like a hole in the head, we need confusion, mystery, we need the end and death of any kind of logic.
Research is always bound by a problem, by an intentionality, by the desire to solve some problem and such (and use it socially, economically, create a new “product” and “company”: so shallow, so stupid, so undemanding, so much more of the same crap that has been going on forever), to predict and such, but this is so stupid and simple, a one bit mind with one bit logic with one bit problems, simple yes/no linear problems that are irrelevant, that are not important: we need crazy, we need insane, we need wild and creative, we need ever more mystery, ever more impossible to understand, we need parallel logic, me need to make as little sense as possible, we need to be completely free from any kinds of problems or boundaries or intentionalities, we need trillions of crazy circuits trillions of crazy and cool and mysterious, and the more you research it, the farther you get away from any logic and understanding, inverse research, the more you analyze the more confusing it gets ever more impossible, the defeat of any kinds of laws and logic and then you are finally free and can have fun.THUS SPOKE THE APE COCKSCIENCE FICTION MUSIC…youtube.com/watch?v=_rwNe2QXwrU
From 8:36 to 11:45
From 32:36 to 33:40
From 50:05 to 51:26 (Barbie Confused…)
From 1:01:49 to 1:08:20

The article says:“Obama could decide going over the cliff isn’t so bad after all – as long as he and congressional Democrats introduce legislation early in the 2013 that gives a tax cut to the middle class retroactively to January 1st (extending the Bush tax cut to the first $250,000 of income) and restores most spending — and Republicans feel compelled to go along.”
What Reich isn’t saying that Obama isn’t playing a good game of chicken by cutting his vacation short like a ‘change we can believe’ in man should. He isn’t saying so because it would be saying QuObama is not of the people and Reich can’t do that, him being a respected member of society and all. But I can, I’m a dog.
Big wall street firms, B of A, & Goldman S. are his ‘base’. Standing firm and staying in Hawaii would betray that the line of scrimmage was moved when he was putting on a big smile. Somebody might notice, so until that happens lets pretend he is black some more.

Soil policy must be part of endeavors to ensure food security. Policy must be embedded in a sustainable goal for food security which emphasizes the link between human needs and a healthy environment.
“A black horse appears, its rider carries a balance in her hand. She says,
A quart of wheat for a shilling, or three quarts of barley; but oil and wine production will continue.”
just sayin.

“You have issues, young lady.
It’s easy to pick out the basic personality and beliefs of a poster if you watch them for a while.”
And you don’t? Which “issues” do you think really matter here? Minor personal issues of a sexual nature (which Im open about, not repressed), or the racist issues that such as You & Count Flacula have?
Think about it: If Hitler had an “issue” about the Jews, and and “issue” about screwing his pooch, which one had the biggest impact on world history?
I think most people would agree that the racist “issue” is more important. For one it can lead to genocide. Which is what Flad is all about anyway, you just like to hide behind the so-called “Immigration issue”. Same thing.
I deal with mine, how about you?
Oh, and to turn things into personal “issues” leads to distractions from the real issues, which you and Flad are great at doing.
So, basically, go fuck your self, or each other, doesn’t matter to me. Might take your minds off the racial “issue” for awhile.
Dee, over & out 😉

Asoka is presenting facts. It’s not racist to point to the historical record. No other race or ethnic group can match the white race (Germans, British, Russians, Americans, Spaniards, ) in the depth and breath, the sheeir breathtaking scale, of depravity and moral bankruptcy toward non-whites (and toward other whites!).
The list is long
German holocaust : millions of Jews killed
Russian pogroms, etc. : millions of Jews and whites killed
Americans: 3,500 slaving voyages enslaving 10 million Africans, 15 million Native Americans killed, and the USA military is in 130 countries, with 900 military bases around the world.
Name one other race, one other ethnic group that has achieved a global imperialism, colonialism, enslavement of millions, murder of millions on a scale whites (Russians, Spaniards, Germans, British, Americans, etc.) have engaged in.
I’m throwing down the gauntlet to provide facts instead of crying “racism!” You can’t do it.
Whites are a cancer on humanity, just as Susan Sontag said.
That is not a racist statement. It is a statement of fact.

I challenge anyone to cite reliable academic sources to show any race or group that has achieved the level of bloodshed and holocausts that whites have. Here is one source for the white extermination of millions of Native Americans:
“In the 1940s and 1950s conventional wisdom held that the population of the entire hemisphere in 1492 was little more than 8,000,000—with fewer than 1,000,000 people living in the region north of present-day Mexico. Today, few serious students of the subject would put the hemispheric figure at less than 75,000,000 to 100,000,000 (with approximately 8,000,000 to 12,000,000 north of Mexico).”
Include deaths caused by disease, displacement, and conquest of Native American populations during European settlement of North and South America and it constitutes an act of genocide (or series of genocides). The alleged genocidal aspects of this event are entwined with loss of life caused by the lack of immunity of Native Americans to diseases carried by European settlers. Some estimates indicate case fatality rates of 80–90% in Native American populations during smallpox epidemics. Whites took advantage of lack of immunity to intentionally increase the Native American death rate.
Stannard, David E. (1993). American Holocaust: The Conquest of the New World. New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 11. ISBN 978-0-19-508557-0.

More than a million a year were sacraficed by Central American Indians. Savages. That’s why so many Tribes flocked to the Spanish side against their Aztec tormentors. These tribes also sacraficed and ate their captives.
The Divine Cortez saved the Indians from each other.

In Los Angeles the police had a gun buy back program that resulted in two military grade hand-held rocket launchers being turned in.
Any of you preaching the importance of the 2nd amendment want to defend RPG launchers being on the streets? Right to bear arms? NRA is against restricting such rights.
Anybody besides me think bazookas, RPG launchers, MANPads, or whatever you want to call them, should not be covered by the 2nd amendment?
Anybody willing to draw the line at RPG launchers? They are on the street, and are being turned in at gun buy backs. Would you support a ban of such arms, or do you think they are protected by the 2nd amendment right to bear arms?

That’s why so many Tribes flocked to the Spanish
============
Did they take their savagery to Europe and murder Europeans? Did their savagery go beyond their own local area? Did they organize world domination, exploitation, slavery, colonialism by engaging in genocide against other whole non-native American hemispheres?
Only whites have done that in the history of humanity.

Going global with imperialism and establishment of a global empire, with all the immorality, greed, murder, enslavement, etc. that goes with it, is the the province of whites these last 500 years … no other race has achieved such global massacres and holocausts. It’s just a fact. But it is what makes it possible for Susan Sontag to correctly state that whites are a cancer on HUMANITY.
Khmer Rouge was a cancer on Cambodia. Mao was a cancer on China. Etc. Etc. Etc. Lots of horrible slaughter of millions of innocents on the home fronts, Asians against Asians, Native Americans against Native Americans, etc.
But who else has gone against the populations of the entire planet to exploit, to murder and to enslave?
Only whites have been a cancer on HUMANITY.

Not for U specifically A, But can’t U F’in guys give it a break please? Yea, yea, yea we are all human and a bunch of jerks. No race, religion, yada, yada, is right or wrong. kiss and make up. We are in this CF together. Over and out.

The Mongols and Huns killed millions of White and Caucasians far from their Lands in Central Asia. The Mongols created the largest Empire in Human History up to that point at least.
How easily your flawed thesis is disproved!

Thanks for the heads up. Haven’t been to Z’s burgers for a long long time. A new reason to pull me up the speedway. A day when I can hang my ears out the window would be best so I may not go that far real soon. Used to work up that way, in a building on the water.
Have a great New Years !!
When it is clear can walk up the hill I live on and see the fireworks over the needle in the distance. I can see them but I can’t hear them but it is a walk and I’m a dog, it’s all good.

“… the best soldiers are the ones eager to go into battle.” — Xhalor
Xhalor, I don’t think you watch too many movies. Because if you did you would know the best soldier is a young female with large breasts and legs up to here, wearing tailored close fitting fatigues that showed off her assets, with a H&K submachine gun slung over her shoulder. Her second in command is a black guy with a combat vest and large biceps, carrying a shotgun.
That’s who wins wars, Xhalor, not the Willie and Joe infantry sloggers Ernie Pyle wrote about in WW2.
–Panic in Year Zero

Drove by the Mall last nite on the Interstate. The place was so full cars were parked up and down the street, thousands of them. A house was burning nearby and the fire engines hadn’t arrived yet. The dirty snow, the burning house, the haze created by so many concentrated automobiles, the acres and acres of pavement and the miles of strip mall in every direction, the artificial light … it seemed a particular form of hell, a hell there is no escape from.
–Panic in Year Zero.

Blacks are a cancer on humanity, just as asoka..keeps proving.
That is not a racist statement. It is a statement of fact.
==========================
You just don’t get it, do you asoka..?
Making blanket statements about any group is racism.

“So, basically, go fuck your self, or each other, doesn’t matter to me.”
-dee, doubling down on her sexual issues-
And there’s nothing that I have ever said on these threads that’s ever been deliberately racist.
Pulling hypothetical statements out of context (like my 10:56 post) does not count.

You just don’t get it, do you asoka..? Making blanket statements about any group is racism.
Doctor to patient: You have Lymes disease. Whites are three times more likely to get the disease than Blacks.
Patient: Doctor, making blanket statements about any group is racism. P4C said so.
Doctor: P4C has slave holders in his family tree and may not be an impartial commentator. I am simply stating facts.
Patient: Oh, you mean like whites ran 3,500 slaving trans-Atlantic slaving voyages and enslaved 10 million Africans? Yes, those are facts verifiable with original shipping receipts and slave ship blueprints which anyone can see in the Customs House Museum in lower Manhattan.
Doctor: Yes, exactly. Verifiable facts, not blanket charges of racism. What evidence did P4C produce?
Patient: None. He just calls Asoka a racist week after week with no substantiating evidence offered, no citations to peer-reviewed literature or academic monographs.

Dee,
The race replacement project is well underway.
Which is why you fled the USA!
Ole!
‘For one it can lead to genocide. Which is what Flad is all about anyway, you just like to hide behind the so-called “Immigration issue”. Same thing.’
Genocide happens now. Here.

Radu only 40 million dead with Mongols. Doesn’t come close to the cancer on all of humanity that whites were and still are.
Death Toll by Whites (in millions)
33 … Half of World War II deaths by whites (Hitler, etc.) Could be more (Russians, Germans, British, Polish, American, etc.)
27 … British India
20 … Stalin
100 … American Indian Holocaust. (SOURCE: Stannard, David E. (1993). American Holocaust: The Conquest of the New World. New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press)
15 … First World War (it was a white thing)
16 … Atlantic slave trade
10 … Various white religious wars (30 Years War, etc.)
7 … Fall of Rome
3 … Southeast Asia bombing/invasion (Johnson & Nixon)231 million deaths by whites … TOTAL so far …
All of the above has source documentation. Please try to document any other racial or ethnic group which has even come close, Radu. Cite your source(s).
Mongols didn’t even reach one quarter of what whites have done, as whites have been overwhelmingly a cancer on all of humanity.

Mongols were just ONE Asian group. Now add to that the Huns, Manchus, Chinese, Vietmanese, Japanese. etc. You can’t compare the whole White Race for the last two thousand years with one Asian group over the course of a couple of centuries. That would be like comparing the brightest Black students with the dumbest Whites and them saying that the races were comparable in IQ. This was in fact done many times.
Again, how easily I defeat you.

Radu, I already did that. Anticipating your retort, I added up all the Asian atrocities in human history and it still doesn’t come to one half of white murders.
You have already lost the argument and are not smart enough to realize that your promotion of whites is what condemns you. You appear to not even know your own history.
See how easily I defeat you. I have read the primary source documents. I have read the peer-reviewed literature. I have read the scholarly monographs. The facts are on my side, Radu.
You are simply promoting racism by promoting white separatism.I am promoting kumbayah, integration, nonviolence, miscegenation, harmony and conviviality between ALL races.
Even you can see my position is not racist, and yours is.
Asoka dot dot

You guys should get a room together, don’t you have some snow to shovel? It will really give you time to think about the BS which certain people spew in the CFN. Sure Whites are bad, Blacks are bad, Baptists are bad, Jews are bad, Hitler’s bad, GWB is bad, everybody be bad and I am the baddest MOFO in town. So there!!!!! ;o)

Hey Marlin, can I be 2nd in command? I have a combat vest and a large well(um, er), not large biceps but sumthin’ to keep GI Jane in line! “This is my rifle, this is my gun. This one’s for fightin’ and this one’s for fun!!” Sorry ladies, no disrespect meant! I gotta get some sleep these back to back snowstorms are killin’ me.

Baptists are bad, Jews are bad…
============
No, you are wrong. Everybody is not bad. Jains, for example, are not bad.
Your false equivalency of religions/races appears to want to excuse bad behavior by saying “well, everybody does it” which is an elementary school age argument.
Not everybody makes thousands of trans-Atlantic voyages and enslaves 10 million Africans. Not everybody travels over an ocean to commit genocide on Native Americans in two hemispheres. Not everybody who has nuclear weapons has used them on unarmed civilians. Not everybody sets up 900 military bases in 130 countries.
Only whites have done those things.

Doctor II: Yes, Mr. P4C, obtaining a second opinion is always a wise course of action – particularly in this case.
This asoka..character is certainly racist, as demonstrated in the primary source document which consists of his/her postings to the the ongoing comment threads of James Howard Kunstler’s Cluster Fuck Nation.
P4C: That sounds bad, Doc. Is there anything that we can do to cure asoka..of his hate for “white people?”
Doc II: Continue to point out the racism, categorical thinking, and hate in his written words, here. I’ll give you a prescription of a New Year’s worth of accurate “Resident Impediment” assertions that you can dispense to him as warranted.

I’ll stand up for anybody. If they need a stand-up guy. You black and white, your either with me or against me types kinda’ bug me. I have friends, black, white, Asian, dogs. They all deserve respect, if respect is given in return. To really tell ya’ the truth ,I prefer dogs over people. I must be a quasi- misanthrope. So be it. At least I can always trust my dogs to act in good faith as most dogs will. They don’t lie, cheat or steal- except for some food left unattended! Yorkie ate my cheese and crackers during a pee break in a movie. The A- Hole has a leg up on me! Jokes on him. I had hop pepper sauce on it!!he’ll be feelin’ it monday. HaHa. Shout out to K-Dog!

As.. You missed my point. We can all get along here and try to solve our problems. Somtimes I think P4C is correct. You becloud the problems yet offer no solutions. Your anti-white rhetoric does tend to grate on the nerves. You and Vlad are both smart intelligent writers. A little more easy give-and-take would certainly help.

From Sydney, Australia.
A New Year, Jim…. I’ll be thinking of you and your bewildered fellow Americans, with genuine interest and, really, quite genuine sympathy. A new departure for me, a feeling that has grown slowly over the years of absorbing the Kunstler take on things. So to all sane Americans, New Year Hopes, Good Wishes, and here’s to taking on this year with the Spirit of Adventure, which it surely will be, one way or another.
Rain. To those lovely KunstlerKids who responded to my previous postings re RAIN, be pleased to know it came, the right sort ( persistant, straight down, warmish, days and nights of it right up to Christmas Eve).. the dams are full, the rivers are belting, the wheat is as high as a you know what, the sheep are fat, the cattle gleam.
The real thrill for me was I won the family competition for the first tomato for Christmas , a pile of gorgeous Rouge de Marmandes that I nursed along with cunning and shrewdness, a big defeat for my brother, his tomato’s sulked, mine thrived, you just cant beat pidgeon poo ey?
Right now, its about 10 hours to 2013, and by my news cast, the ungovernable Nation of the USA is about to bugger my dollar ( that is, my dollar will rise, you bastards ) I consider this malice aforethought, unforgivable, and while I have my export wheat already paid for, ditto wool, ditto lamb, and the national commonwealth of AU bauxite, iron ore, uranium, coal, etc etc etc is contracted at 2012 dollar value, this scamming, rotten, repellant act of devaluing the US $ to spread your debt around is reprehensible.
Happy NEW YEAR, to all. Except that uber arch idiot Vlad, who’s demise is already coming down the pipe, at warp speed. That’s what happens to failures.
Pepp

A number of years back, we in my small family agreed that Christmas was about being together and enjoying each other, not about spending money we can’t afford, seeing relatives we would scarcely recognize if we bumped into them, and reviving unspeakably trivial family disputes that should have been buried 30 years ago. So, we have an unspoken spending limit of about 30 dollars per gift at the most, one gift per person from each of the 6 of us, and we gather at my mother’s house in suburban St Louis for a casual buffet of ham, lasagna, and a vegetable casserole, followed by eggnog and cookies. No need to buy expensive clothes, no frantic housecleaning in prep, no schedule packed with visits to people we haven’t seen in 20 years and don’t miss. Gifts are small, chosen to amuse and charm, and maybe serve a purpose- velvet house slippers, or a book, or some other small item.
I usually travel by Amtrak from my home in Chicago, which is not only cheaper than air travel but far more polite and relaxed. Chicago’s Union Station is gorgeous and is beautifully decorated for Christmas, but things go rapidly downhill as the train rolls out of the station and south through the post-industrial badlands of Chicago’s south side, and hence through the flatlands of Illinois. I can’t roll across Illinois without being struck by the extreme ugliness of most of the ragged little towns along the route. I’m pleased that Joliet has restored its beautiful rail station, where both Amtrak and METRA trains stop, but Bloomington, Pontiac, Lincoln, and Springfield are absolute ratholes. Does any other developed country have such ugly towns as we do? I can’t imagine leaving Chicago for one of these places no matter how bad life in the megacities may become in the post-peak fossil-fuel era now upon us. It will take a long, long time and people who love beauty and know how a town should look to make these wretched places anyplace a person would want to live.
Things hit bottom upon arrival at the horrendously ugly Gateway Intermodal Transportation Center in St. Louis, a stringy, disjointed strip of concrete building jammed under the I-64 overpass, in the city’s trash-filled backyard. From the entry to the station, you can see the roof of the gorgeous old Union Station building, built in the 1880s when St. Louis was the world’s largest rail hub, now a failing shopping mall. That is really sad, because it is visually very appealing, and when it was developed in the 80s, it was for a while one of THE places to hang out, but there aren’t enough people living in the immediate area to support it in this relentlessly car-dependent, suburban-oriented metroplex, so it has withered in spite of its beauty, and the Omni Hotel within. Why, you have to wonder, did the city planners not see what an opportunity this would be to revive rail in St. Louis, and that the mall and the trains could help each other.
From there, I catch another Amtrak to Kirkwood, where the family meets me in downtown Kirkwood at the beautiful station, a lovely, traditional station house built of limestone, which was restored and is maintained and staffed by community volunteers, who have lovingly decorated it for Christmas. It seems to welcome the traveler as the tragic concrete mess downtown does not. On the way there, I pass by my mother’s house, and see the backyards of many of our neighbors, which sport far fewer swimming pools than they once did. People are having them removed now. We in my family are not the only people scaling back and downsizing- the extravagances of the past seem decadent and wasteful now and we wonder how we could all have been so foolish.
At this stage of our lives, we feel like giving, not taking, and think of the young people, my sister’s kids, and the world we’ve made for them. Every moment we spend with each other is precious, for you never know when it might be the last. Things seem increasingly unimportant. We feel grateful just to have each other.

We can all get along here and try to solve our problems. Somtimes I think P4C is correct. You becloud the problems yet offer no solutions.
===========
I have offered plenty of solutions. Maybe you just don’t like them.
Here are some of the solutions I have offered:
Overpopulation: vasectomy, abortion on demand, family planning, education for empowerment of women, free morning-after pills, free contraception, etc. (you pay a little now for contraception, or you pay much much more later in other types of costs, including resource depletion and environmental degradation from overpopulation)
Environmental degradation: Reduce global population (see above), carbon tax, support of Kyoto protocols, eliminate the military (largest oil consumer/polluter), stop fracking, stop XL pipeline, massive conservation efforts, construction of mass transit systems, etc.
My solution for “race” is nonviolence … ahimsa … integration of the races, miscegenation, equal opportunity for minorities including affirmative action for minorities who have been denied opportunities for employment, housing, education, etc. for hundreds of years, to promote equal rights under the law. Protection of minority rights. This means protection of whites when they become the new minority. I have never advocated violence against whites or any other race. I have never advocated separation of the races or any kind of racism that leads to genocide.
I have lots of solutions related to food production (permaculture & veganism & fasting), transportation (mass transit), war (unilateral disarmament), housing (adobe brick construction), 2nd amendment rights, employment, education, money supply, etc.
But I don’t think CFN is really interested in solutions. CFN is more interested in bitching about Obama or “the ruling class”, fantasizing about TSHTF. CFN is interested in blaming our problems on poor brown Mexican immigrants, or rich Jewish bankers, or radical Muslims … CFN wants to blame anyone else … just to keep from looking in the mirror and seeing mostly old white males who have run this country for the last 200+ years.
Old Christian white guys (WASPs) have run the country into the ground, the last one being George W. Bush, who nearly destroyed the country and made it difficult to get out of the hole Bush dug for us as the country went into free fall in the last year of his presidency.
Things are going to get better as we get more minority Presidents, more women Presidents, more Atheist Presidents, more Gay Presidents, etc. to balance out the damage the last 200+ years of WASPs have done.

I have also promoted meditation as part of the solution to our problems. I have written about vipassana and zazen. Zazen is a deep unoccupiedness – not doing anything outwardly, not doing anything inwardly. It is not even meditation because when you meditate you are making some sort of effort, you are trying to do something: chanting a mantra, remembering God, or even remembering yourself.
But these efforts create ripples, these efforts create vibrations and your sitting becomes corrupted. Then your sitting is not innocent. Zazen means: sit, and just sit, nothing else. I don’t think CFN even understands the relationship between our current clusterfuck and how meditation is a solution.

Do any of you CFNers know of any good books that elucidate the young American Generation Y “Whipper Snappers'” worldview?
I read an excellent book many years ago entitled “Generation X” which provides a very good overview of how the various generations since and including the WWII generation (referred to in the book as the “GI Generation”) through Generation X. I’m a typical Generation Xer. If I had my druthers, I’d be living out of a suitcase.

WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was admitted to a New York hospital Sunday after the discovery of a blood clot stemming from the concussion she sustained earlier this month.
===========
If Clinton dies, the idiot conservatives will say she died to avoid testifying in front of some Republican witch hunt committee.

you can see the coming doom that will be our fate unless we change.
============
More alarmism, Radu. Caucasians make up about 15% of the world’s population and there is no indication they are going to go extinct. You are promoting that fear to oppose integration, miscegenation, intermarriage, and racial harmony through multiculturalism.
I will fight for the protection of whites from discrimination or violent assault if whites become more and more of a minority population. Whites should be treated with respect, even though the era of white privilege is over.
Of course, the truth is that the white race is not going extinct in the USA. If you look at US census results, you see that whites comprised 75.1% of the total US population in 2000, and 72.4% in 2010 – giving the impression that whites have declined in number.
But if you look at the actual population numbers you see that, between the ten years, the total number of whites actually rose from 211,460,626 to 223,553,265. So the whole white extinction thing that you like to talk about, Radu, is another white supremacist lie.

Yes, really. And the amazing thing is that since Asians are so much more of the world’s population (3.6 times the white population), you would expect them to have 3.6 times the violence.
But whites far outnumber Asians when it comes to killing people, with 231 million killed by whites. Asian violence, in proportion to their population, should be 3.6×231=831.6 million.
Whites make up a small percentage of the world population, but have committed a much larger number of the world’s massacres, holocausts, and wars.
Asian 54% of population have killed 141 million
White 15% have killed 231 million
Whites, though a minority population, are just more savage, more brutal, more immoral, more bloodthirsty, more greedy, more barbarian than Asians.
Whites are a cancer on the whole of humanity, whereas Asians mostly have killed each other, not going around the world to kill non-Asians.
40 million: Mao
40 million: Genghis Kahn
24 million: Fall of Ming Dynasty
20 million: Taiping Rebellion
10 million: Xin Dynasty
7 million: Chinese Civil Wars
===========
141 million TOTAL
141 million does not come close to 831.6 million, which would just put Asians on a par with whites. No race or ethnic group can compare to the depravity of whites, none have killed on the scale that whites have killed.None, except whites, have been a cancer on the whole of humanity, just as Susan Sontag so accurately said.

After months of frantic hype about the economic disruption that awaits if Congress and the president fail to reach a deal and the federal government goes “over the fiscal cliff” … the agencies responsible for implementing those changes, including the IRS and the Pentagon, are well aware that congressional and White House negotiators will most likely come to some sort of deal within weeks or months — and so they are planning to carry on as usual, according to a broad review of private and public government plans.
In other words, there will be no cliff. There won’t even be a slope. Congress and the president can have their public and private dramas, but the government officials responsible for carrying out their eventual orders have seen this movie before, and they know how it ends.
It ends just like the Y2K hype ended. With a whimper, not a bang.

Rhino said:
What do I see from these govt housing stats? I see a segment of the economy in severe distress, producing new houses at a rate per million people far below that of previous decades. But you have spinners like on this site touting the don’t worry, all is well hogwash.
***************************************************************
Exactly!! The latest spin is that housing is “stabilizing” yet, in the “fine print” of an article, they concede that houses are being bought at HALF of the 700,000 annual rate (slightly more … about 377,000) which denotes a healthy economy.
The spinmeisters either hide critical statistics or they neglect to say that many year-over-year comparisons are to depression-level stats of 2008. I’m still musing over how we get a positive GDP when M1 (cash) velocity is LESS than 2008.
E.

K-Dog gave the ACTUAL NUMBER of layoffs and you just say that your laundry list of companies are “hiring”. So if they hire a net of 23 people you would put this next to a company laying off 2,000. As is always the case, you engage in a tactic which, if someone else engaged in it, would be condemned by you.
Also, since you don’t live in America, how in the hell could you be conversant with the actual life on the ground here since you’re just a tool who believes in media-manipulated statistics that are based on depression-level year-over-year numbers from 2008 so any “growth” is a sham compared to a healthy economy.
You’ve always been a dingbat but the “hiring list” was particularly funny.
E.

Asoka said:
Asoka is presenting facts. It’s not racist to point to the historical record. No other race or ethnic group can match the white race (Germans, British, Russians, Americans, Spaniards, ) in the depth and breath, the sheeir breathtaking scale, of depravity and moral bankruptcy toward non-whites (and toward other whites!).
*****************************************************************
Africa is a continent that has NEVER had peace. Ever. One year it’s Rwanda, the next it’s the Congo, another time it’s Somalia, and yet another time it’s the Sudan and, of course, many of them are in a perpetual state of war.
You ever talk to whites living in Africa? They’ll tell you to a man/woman that you do NOT go across any African country without several guns in your possession. Lawlessness dominates most of the continent. They shunt most visiting whites off to the few cosmo cities that are not killing fields.
Any person with an iota of common sense (which you’ve never had a scintilla of) knows that the ONE continent that always has, is, and always will be full of multiple wars and local lawlessness on a vast scale is Africa. I wonder what horrors white South Africans experience on a daily basis since the goddamned place can’t even keep the lights on reliably since blacks took over.
Finally, WWII … the big Magilla, was a WORLD war fought in Asia and Africa, not just by Whities. You don’t separate out things like Japanese slaughter of Chinese, for example. You conflate, confuse, and mix up. Typical Asoka tactics. Africans in wars like the two Congo wars also cannot handle the aircraft and ordnance of Whitey ’cause it’s too complicated. If they could, the whole fucking continent would be a smoldering wreck. In that sense, it’s a good thing they’re STUPID.
E.

Nicky continued to mature into a woman and, with her beautiful physique, many wondered whether she would try her hand at modeling like Paris had done. Though she does not get enough credit for it, Nicky always had a flair for the business side of things and began studying design in the hopes that her abilities would be fueled. Her goal was to create accessories for the fashion industry, not simply model in them.

Her natural good looks and marketable name were too much to pass up for designer Anand Jon, and consequently, Nicky did end up doing some modeling for him. Her big feat, however, came when she was asked to design handbags for Tokyo-based Samantha Thavasa. Nicky and sister Paris produced such great results, that their handbags could be found in select stores and won over celebrity fans like Britney Spears, Tara Reid and Pamela Anderson.

nicky hilton’s parties and boyfriends

Once romantically linked with MTV VJ Brian McFayden and male models Mark Vanderloo and Marcus Schenkenberg, Nicky Hilton still has a lot planned. Instead of sitting pretty with her inheritance, she is continuing her work in fashion design and still contributes to the Free Arts for Abused Children Foundation. While her nightclub partying still grabs headlines and makes for interesting water cooler gossip, Nicky Hilton has proven that she is more than just a hot heiress. Her future in the fashion industry is still bright and whether she gets far or not, she’ll always provide us with entertaining stories thanks to her crazy New York nightlife.

Perhaps her party days are over now that Nicky is Mrs. Meister: she and New York businessman Todd Andrew Meister got married on August 15, 2004, in an impromptu wedding ceremony in Las Vegas. In October of 2004, the marriage was annulled.

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